Jon Schild wrote:
> Yeah, and I always thought that some of the "rules" that
singing coaches 
> impose were really stupid.  It makes no sense whatever to go to great 
> lengths to teach you to say a French U, or a German unlaut O properly, 
> and then say "English vowel sounds are impure, we need to throw them 
> away and use the proper European pronounciation of a, e, i".

Unfortunately, it /does/ make sense. The "vowels" in
"hay" and "so", 
like the "vowels" in "eye", "cow", /are/
impure, and consequently 
/cannot/ be sung sustained. Nothing can be done for "eye" and
"cow", but 
it's not only easier to sing the pure "e" sound (which occurs in English 
in "egg" and the words that rhyme with it) and the pure
"o" sound (which 
doesn't normally occur in English that I can recall), it's also easier 
to understand.

-- 
John W. Kennedy
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have 
always objected to being governed at all."
   -- G. K. Chesterton.  "The Man Who Was Thursday"
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