>>Speaking English as a first language is such an impediment to the later ability to learn any other language that you can't even begin to understand (ok, preaching to the quire here - most of the participants here managed to get around that obstacle). I once had to wait in the hall for about half an hour at a community college, listening to a class sweating their vocal chords at their first Italian lesson. After 30 minutes, they still haven't learned to pronounce A, E, I, O and U. I wanted to close the door so I wouldn't listen to their suffering.
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>We use Knorr brakes here, for trains - it's pronounced Kuhnorr, no way to get the 'uh' out of there.

Ah, the gn-, kn-, pn- and psi- thingy :). I've watched fellow programmers break their tongues trying to pronounce Donald Knuth as Knuth, not K-(dramatic break)-Nuth, or GNU as gnu, not g-...-nu.

Not to mention the reporter from SF Chronicle who couldn't exactly tell me which city did he visit - Nin or Knin? They differ quite a bit, and are within about an hour's drive from each other... but sounded all the same to the guy. He pronounced them "nin" and "nin", irrespectively.

>The choir director, an Englishman by the name DaSilva(!), professional piano player, but working as a software developer(!), and a few others (~3 out of 70) were quite good, but they could not change anyone's else pronunciation one bit during the ~20 practices we had.

Whoever caused the great vowel shift caused a lot of grief.