American English dialects and pronunciation have been a point of ... to collect information about what terms, word pairs and sounds are used in different parts of North America.

It's important to note that the spelling of a word is not always an accurate guide to how it is pronounced. Similarly the pronounciation of a word is not always helpful when working out how that ...

It is because the pronunciation of certain words has changed over the last few hundred years whereas the spelling has remained the same. It is simply a matter of learning which letters are silent ...