yeah... you're all hot potato rollers!
and regarding the diphthongs - listen thoroughly to the vowels. when you say "show" - what do you hear after the 'sh'? it's your o-sound, right, but what does the o-sound do? it slides down from open sound to a closed sound: [oʊ̯]
other vowels do it the other way round.
if you listen closely to the pronunciation, you'll hear that the names of the english vowels are pronounced as diphthongs themselves (except for the e) - their sounds make "curves"!
it has nothing to do with what's written - a plain written o-vowel still sounds like [oʊ̯], sliding from open sound to closed one, a simple a-vowel sounds like [eɪ̯] and does the same.
it does have something to do with long and short vowels, that's true - the long ones are almost always diphthongs in your language (maybe even always, don't know), the short ones may be or may be not - still, a long vowel is not necessarily the same as a diphthong (think 'creep' - no slide within the 'ee'.... compared to 'beer' - huge opening slide in non-rhotic accent, still a slight opening slide towards the 'r' in rhotic accent)
read the wikipedia article on that, if you're interested, also the one on rhotic and non-rhotic accents in the english language - it's quite fascinating to delve into the area of phonetics and pronunciation, especially for one who works with it, like you do with your poetry.
and as for the wondering about what you hear when you read someone else's written text... yeah, you can never be quite sure if what you hear in your mind is the what the writer hears in her/his mind. even if you speak the same language!
thanks for the conversation, dor. i enjoyed it!
but now i gotta go to bed. it's far too late already to be up (3 a.m.)!
