Pronunciation of "Life" and "Live"

[Williamyh]

Hi All,

From the phonetics symbols, I understood the pronunciation difference between "Life" laɪf and "Live" laɪv, life is unvoiced f and live is voiced v, but I always hear people say "Life" as "Like" without k sound and with f sound at the end. So I don't think the pronunciation difference of "Life" and "Live" is not only on the "f" sound and "v" sound. Please advise.

WYH

[raindoctor]

Post a sound file, which helps.

Are you meant to say that life has one more vowel length than live, say, laɪ ə f ?

Such length difference can be heard between quite and quiet

[Williamyh]

Post a sound file, which helps.

Are you meant to say that life has one more vowel length than live, say, laɪ ə f ?

Such length difference can be heard between quite and quiet

Please listen the following audio record, there are two different pronunciation of "Life" as I heard. Which one is correct? or both are correct?

Download Life - MP3 Ringtone Life by Life - Free Music Hosting

[Linguist__]

Both of those pronunciations I hear to be 'life'. The first sounds more natural.

However, your original concern about 'life' being said like 'like'... I believe all three words - life, live, like - are the same in stanard accents. In RP they are all the diphthong /aɪ/. It will differ depending on the accent you are hearing, but I would say 'life' and 'like' are more likely to sound the same.

Of course, we are talking about 'live' as in 'alive' or 'a live band'. 'Live' as in 'I live in a house' is completely different