I found a few similar questions, but none of them gave me the answer to this.
I'm a native Serbian, so I have problems understanding diphtongs, because Serbian has none of them.
Serbian has only five vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/), so it's much simpler than English to pronounce (at least considering vowels).
What bugs me, is that I hear diphthongs /eɪ/ (play), /aɪ/ (time), /ɔɪ/ (choice) as /ej/, /aj/ and /oj/ ; to be more specific, I hear them as monophtongs followed by semivowel /j/. Other diphthongs make make sense, and I both hear and pronounce as they are ( /oʊ/, /aʊ/ …).
When I try to pronounce those as gliding vowels, it sounds really unnatural to my ears.
My question here is, should I continue to pronounce them as /ej/, /aj/ and /oj/ or should I practice to pronounce them correctly?
Best Answer
Sure, you should practice pronouncing the diphthongs (and trifthongs as well) correctly. Try phonetics practice exercises.
American English Diphthongs by Rachel's English
Listening to your own speech when you repeat after a native speaker record and try to repeat as close to the native speech as possible is very helpful.
Actually, many people who hesitated whether or not they should improve their pronunciation, decided to improve after listening to their own speech recorded.
Just imagine 3 people from different parts of the world speaking and pronouncing the same words each in their own way, and a poor native English speaker trying to make them out.
Everyone should try to bring their English as close to standard as possible, otherwise the internationally used English will be something totally different from native.