" Great point about mundane knowledge on talk page. No one would ask you to cite your sources if you were to claim that the s in ""version"" is a voiced prepalatal fricative and the g in ""virgin"" is a voiced prepalatal affricative, right? English's 16 or so vowels make it difficult for foreigners, and althgough I can distinguish between all of them I've noticed that Americans can't eg dist between ""dad"" and ""dead"" - but don't cite me on that!"