Not at all? I’ll have to be very careful when pronouncing my A’s then. I automatically want to use my A as in “cat”.
Unless you’re from Bari, the capital city of diphthongs 
! (Anyway they are regional variations, as we said before)
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Yes I agree. It was a typo, I wanted to write bat, cut. Fixed.
Think of the A in “bat”.
To me it’s the same A as in “cat”
And all other three-letter words ending in -at!
Naturally, cat, bad, bat, etc. etc. But in Dutch there’s no such sound.
There’s this song we sometimes sang on birthdays for some reason. The lyrics are something like this:
Heppie birfdee toejoe! Heppie birfdee toejoe!
(When I was ~5 I thought tooyoo was some kind of English expression of joy, like hoorah.)
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NOOOOOOOO! I was about to finish the E and discourse deleted everything!
Dutch is amazing. There are some of the most characteristic sounds I’ve ever heard in a european language. Like in “omschrijven”. The aspirate sounds mostly, I guess.
Oh no! 
Next time save it in a Word doc first!
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This is why Facebook added those reactions other than “like”, I suppose. 
I don’t think that fricative is particularly rare. Spanish has the jota, Hebrew and Arabic also have it, Scottish has it… that being said, the sch does seem to be somewhat difficult for foreigners. And sure, Hebrew and Arabic aren’t Indo-European. But it’s also in Danish, Czech, Greek even, Icelandic/Norwegian (although it tends toward /h/), Frisian…
Also fun is the distinction between v and w. To foreigners they both sound like v and they can’t tell the difference.
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Letter E
The letter E in italian is slightly more difficult, since it can be pronounced in many ways.
Well, just two.
It’s ɛ (LISTEN) and e (LISTEN)
EDIT: previous link fixed
ɛ is written with the graphic symbol “è”, while e is written “é”.
Please note that the accent is mandatory only when the stress is on the last syllable, otherwise you can omit it.
So, these are the two italian sounds for E on the IPA chart:
That’s why we have issues with the word “cat”!
The correct pronunciation is “kæt”. But we don’t have the æ sound… if you listen to it, you’ll realize it’s similar to the sound of ɛ, which, in italian, is an “E”.
These are the english sounds for “E”:
What? Only two sounds?? Just like in italian? Well, they are not the same two sounds, but two, still.
So, here the matter is much simpler.
…or not?
Well, no, indeed, since, again, english has many sounds (sometimes written as an O, or an I, or a U) which doesn’t exist in italian, and the italian ear approximates to an “E”. Here they are:
If you’re interested, I suggest to go on the IPA Vowel chart on Wikipedia, and listen to all these sounds. Have fun!
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I often do that (in a plain text editor), but i feel so OCD when I do that…
Letter I
Veeeeeeery simple.
the only right pronunciation of “I” in italian is i (LISTEN)
What? You’d swear it sounds “ee”? Yes. But since the sound “ee” is a cardinal (“pure”) vowel sound, in the IPA chart it has a pure, simple symbol: “i”.
And since italian has ONLY cardinal vowels, that is the only correct pronunciation of “I” in italian.
As I mentioned before, regional variations can admit other sounds, up to 10 vowel sounds or more. But The correct italian only admits cardinal vowels, which are the purest sounds (at the edges of the chart).
So, here we have the italian I:
And the english I’s:
So if english people say “ship” (ʃɪp), italians simply say “ʃip”, like in “sheep”. They say “lip” (lɪ̈p), those say “lip”, like in “leap”.
And, by the way: italians can’t understand why the same sound “i” can be written “ee” (as in sheep) or “ea” (as in leap).
English is hard 
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You made me think about something which is called, in italian theater slang, “birignao”. It’s a sort of mannerism in pronouncing vowels, which is considered an error of beginners when they’re trying to express feelings.
Actually the way, in italian, to mock an english accent is to make a birignao: you don’t use cardinal vowels, but instead of the single italian sound on the chart, you substitute it with ANY other of the multiple sounds english uses in that area.
Fun fact: since dubbing was invented later on, in the first years of talkie cinema, the biggest productions where filmed many times in different versions, with the actors speaking in different languages. That was the case of Laurel and Hardy, for example. The secondary roles were played by italian actors, While the main roles remained to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy who had to learn by heart the lines… in italian!
This lead to a very hilarious pronunciation, which became so famous that, when the dubbing was invented and Stan and Ollie were dubbed by italian actors, they used to mock that pronunciation.
The first Laurel and Hardy movie dates back to 1929. Dubbing was invented in 1933.
So, even in the later movies until 1951 (when they made their last movie), Stan and Ollie in Italy always talk with a heavy birignao, no rolling R, and wrong tonic stresses.
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Little contest…
Given the rules I’ve provided you with, can you guess the correct pronunciation of my name?
Come on, let me hear your voices!
M
+
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So you say “betmen”, not “batmen”?
Even by watching the original Batman intro, I hear “A” pure, not “E”. Am I wrong?
This reminds me of a situation with a Finnish guy, Teemu, who I met in the X-files Yahoo chat room back in the day. He called me up once and asked how I think his name is pronounced. I said TEA-MOO and much laughter ensued. Turns out it was more like BEAR-VOO or something.
I’ll let others have a go at pronouncing Ema first 
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No!!! 
(Capra = goat)
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Ok, hang on…
No, hang on…
Edit: yeah, kind of like in the video. I’m thinking of a different sound to you when I see the letter “e”.
…I have no idea what’s going on in the song, but it sounds good 
Edit 2: more like in the first video than in the second. But hang on, I’ll record something…