> There may be some confusion about the meaning of [e] here... in your
> last post, you mentioned having studied the American X-SAMPA page at
>
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/american.htm .
>
> This page uses /e/ and /o/ to represent the phonemes "long a" and
> "long o". However, these two phonemes are pronounced as diphthongs
> [eI] and [oU] in most dialects, so the phonemic representation
> /e/, /o/ is a bit misleading.
>
> Thus, when you listen to the [e] of the IPA page, you don't hear
> the American phoneme /e/ (which actually sounds like [eI]), but the
> pure vowel [e]. This might be why it sounds different from what
> you expect.