as in <BET> and as in <BAT> Listen

Listen and practise:

- - - - - - -
bet - - - - - - - bat
men - - - - - - man
bend - - - - - band
said - - - - - - sad
beg - - - - - - bag

They formed a ten men band
He said he'd had a bad day
I begged him not to take my bag

Listen to the difference in vowel length between:
sat and sad
back and bag

Norwegian learners' problems:
Listen

Again these two sounds are fairly straightforward for most Norwegians. However, people with some dialect backgrounds, for example the Bergen dialect, have problems with the -sound, because they do not have a sound like that in their Norwegian accent. Besides, one should remember that the English-sound, even though it is categorized as a short vowel sound, may be pretty long sometimes, particularly in front of voiced sounds [see above].

SPELLING BOX: : <e> send NB! any; bread; friend *************** : <a> sad