I don't think you'll find any English /e/ that is not part of a diphthong.

The closest would be words like "player" /plejɚ/ if you consider /jɚ/ to be in a separate syllable, or...

Maybe "air" (in some dialects), but the "r" is all messing with it.

player |ˈpleɪər|

and in air, it is ɛ in most dialects

@Fx Yeah, that's how I say player.

@Fx Yeah, you are right.

Same with err?

I'm looking for a loanword that would not have been butchered, but can't find any

err |ər| |ɛr|

(my life changed the day I learnt to read those pronunciations in the dictionary!)

@Fx I think the 'r' must be messing with your perceptions. There's no way "air" has an [ɛ].

@JPmiaou Or it is messing with your perceptions :)

Vowels before "r" can be weird — and there is variation.

But I've learned not to use 'r'-words in pronunciation guides, because the 'r' messes everything up.

@JPmiaou I suggest you write to the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary

personally, I avoid saying "err" or even "air", just because most of the time, people don't understand me if I do :)

I know there is a three-way Mary-merry-marry distinction in New York...

/meri/ /mɛri/ /mæri/ (but I get them mixed up)

And I think dictionaries list this distinction, at least some do.

@Kosmonaut I have a pretty good ear for [ɛ] versus [e], because Hungarian uses them. (kert [kɛrt] is 'garden'; kért [ke:rt] is 'asked'.)

@JPmiaou I'm actually kind of kidding... I have no ability to distinguish them well because three distinctions all have collapsed into one sound for me.

@JPmiaou |ɛ| vs |e| is crucial in French, because conjugated verbs oscillate between one and the other (chanté [-te] is preterite, chantais [-tɛ] is imperfect)

@Kosmonaut I can't tell any difference between Mary and marry, but merry is slightly more [ɛ]-like.

yes

I am pretty sure the way New Yorkers say "Mary" is the way I say all of them.

And "marry" is the /mæri/ one.

Which just shows that what sounds you use/hear in English has little to do with what sounds you can readily distinguish.

@JPmiaou — True of all languages. We don't hear phonemes we didn't grow up hearing.

It's all contextual. We can hear them in the places we can hear them.

@Robusto He is even talking about phonemes we hear, in places we aren't used to.

Like /ŋ/ at the end of "hang".

Many languages happily put this at the beginnings of words.

oh i'm so glad i stumbled into this conversation

English speakers have trouble hearing or pronouncing that.

Yeah. That particular one (/ŋ/) is what I hear in Japanese when they say ga but it's actually softer. If I say nga they look at me funny.

@Robusto Maybe you just look funny?

;)

Well, there's that. They're not used to such strikingly handsome westerners ...

@Robusto True, I haven't had a chance to visit Japan yet.

Oops, child is waking. Later, all!

Seriously, I knew an American woman in Tokyo who was six feet tall and had long, flaming orange hair. She would literally stop traffic.

heh.

Japanese make no bones about staring at gaijin, especially statuesque females.

@Robusto That seems like it should be beneficially abusable...

@MrHen — I thought she could rent out her services to a crew of bank robbers or something.

Japan has no bank robbers, I thought.

@Kosmonaut Perfect! Untapped potential!

Good point.

@MrHen — Hmm ... isn't all potential essentially untapped?

@Robusto "He has fulfilled his potential."

But the bag is empty at that point.

Might as well just throw it away.

Right. "He has fulfilled his potential. Kill him tonight."

Hmm ... not sure I exactly like that.

I assume you have a reason.

Er, I am not trying to be antagonistic. (In case that seemed a little aggressive.)

Nah, not worried.

I'm talking about the usage.

Ah

Trying to figure out if potential is still potential if it's been fulfilled. My brain hurts now. Thanks a lot.

:(

So, no past tense potential?

Not sure.

Well, actually: "He had great potential."

Anyway, gotta pack up. TTYL.

Mmk

Cheers

Ooh, if child is waking, that means I can call my sis without risk of waking said child, 'cause she's, like, already awake and can't be waken up further. Right?

Absolutely!

Well FF4 is unusable for me.

Lost of quirks, extensions manager is nearly unusable, some essential extensions do not work.

I have rolled back to 3.6.16.

Besides, I was still unable to type a normal comment on the stackexchange sites (too slow javascript).

So I asked myself, what would I gain? What would I lose? Unfortunately, my choice is quite clear for the time being. I do hope FF4 and/or the extensions I need will reach maturity sooner rather than later.

I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to use Firefox over Chrome.

The only thing left really that's keep me with the browser is FlashGot.

No other essential extensions?

NoScript, too.

Right.

I'm not a developer though.

I have so many I absolutely need...

Neither am I!

Oh really?

It seems like everyone on the network, no matter how diverse their interests, programs for a living.

Absolutely!

It's actually kinda scary there are so many computer programmers.

Yes, so it seems. But I couldn't write a single line in C (or whatever it is called) if my life depended on it!

It's strange to think that it's kind of an entirely new profession, only sprung up within the last 30 years.

lol

Yeah... I am glad it exists, though.

I like my pretty programs.

What site hooked on you on the Exchange first?

This one?

Super User, though I only answered a couple of Autohotkey questions there before I found this one.

(BTW can you approve my edits?)

Oh, where?

Oh, I thought you high rep users had access to some dashboard with edits.

To approve them,. Or something.

I can approve them, but so far I have only seen the edits when I was browsing questions.

Perhaps there is a dashboard, let me see. I never bother to understand the interface much.

Meh, I don't see any such function. Nor a dashboard, for that matter.

S'ok.

You can link your edited answer/question if you like.

Then I can approve/disapprove.

Ahh, I see.

It's just titles.

Approved!

It is weird that the asker didn't know science fiction...

True.

Gotta hurtle towards 2K rep so this annoyingness doesn't bother me anymore.

Oh, does 2k let you edit without approval?

Have you gotten access to any cool new features at your rep level?

Yeah, 2K lets you edit without approval.

Actually I never paid a great deal of attention to those privileges.

The only noticeable one was voting to close questions.

Still not very exciting.

LOL.

I think a bit exciting.

Perhaps there is another cool one that I missed.

It's the only time your name appears in a big font.

Closed by X, Y, Z, and A makes you seem like a powerful coterie.

Well, you still need 5 votes to really close it, so not terribly exciting...

Hehe, yeah... though I suspect most questions are closed in one thwack by a moderator.

Right.

The diamond is even more awesome in its power.

Oh I gotta go, phone. Later!

Alright, ciao.