American-English speakers question

flapane · Post by **flapane** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 11:22 am

Another "strange case" (hey, 15 days left to my trip!) is the word "Dulles".
It seems that it's pronunciated like "Dallas", maybe with a little difference on the last vowel (A instead of E).
Doesn't the vowel next to "D" make any difference? It seems like "DU" has the same pronunciation of "DA"... does it make any sense?

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 11:51 am

flapane wrote:Another "strange case" (hey, 15 days left to my trip!) is the word "Dulles".
It seems that it's pronunciated like "Dallas", maybe with a little difference on the last vowel (A instead of E).
Doesn't the vowel next to "D" make any difference? It seems like "DU" has the same pronunciation of "DA"... does it make any sense?

I assume you are talking about Washington Dulles Airport? The U is "short" and is pronounced as "uh" not "ah". However, the U is not "long" and not pronounced as "ew"

flapane · Post by **flapane** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 11:52 am

Thanks.
Yes, I wouldn't want somebody to give me indications for Dallas, TX and not the airport, so I'd better spot the difference among the two words.

Reachable · Post by **Reachable** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:26 pm

Dallas rhymes with palace and chalice.

Dulles is pronounced duh'-liss.

flapane · Post by **flapane** » Wed Aug 25, 2010 2:37 am

Thank goodness everything went well, and I reached Dulles

I've clearly noticed the different accents in Boston, NY, Philly and DC, with the last two being more "black", and so a little bit harder to understand, but nothing dramatic. Bostonian accent in some way remembers of UK accent. NY accent is what one would consider the "american accent", if living outside the US.