Both "Ice" and "Life" have two different pronunciations?

[EngFan]

Dear All,

I always hear people say "ice" would have two different sounds, I don't know how to express it, would this be affected by the different sounds of /aɪ/, I also hear people say "life" would have two different sounds, please advise!

EngFan

 

[konungursvia]

In some dialects, such as Canadian English and certain regions of the UK, a vowel is noticeably shortened before an unvoiced consonant (/s/ and /f/ in your 2 examples, as compared to a voiced final consonant, as in I've and hive. In others, this phenomenon is less pronounced. So you may hear a really long, drawled out /aI/ in ice / life, but you may hear quite a clipped, short version of the vowel, with less obvious diphthong quality.

This is in fact the main difference between AmE and CanE: We even say "out", "about" and 'house" with a shortened diphthong, much shorter than our American cousins, but we pronounce "loud" and "vows" the same way they do.

 

[santimarti]

I can only find one pronunciation in my dictionary, I´ll have a look on this thread, I didn´t know this.