I say they start to pronounce the letter, then change their mind.
That’s perfect (and what I should say instead of “swallow the last sound” which also works).
There’s really no substitute for hearing a native speaker speak, and listening to them enough that the accent becomes your own. I was lucky to have French teachers who were natives (“Bonjour, Mme. Fueger!”).
I’ve been watching LUPIN on Netflix, and one option at the bottom of the screen is “French (ORIGINAL LANGUAGE) with English Subtitles”. I wish I could do this with all shows… French and Italian are the most melodious languages.
Technically, with Italian, you’d need a small inset in the screen with a person supplying the required arm waving gestures to get the full meaning.
(I was working in Italy for a number of years. Our secretary would clamp the phone [with one of those extenders] to the side of her face while gesturing wildly. I commented that he/she at the other end couldn’t see that. I was informed that, Yes they can).
From the 1931 version of “The Maltese Falcon:”
Dudley Digges, who played Gutman was only 52.
Thelma Todd, who played Iva Archer (Spade’s paramour and widow of his partner Miles Archer) died at four years later at 29 of carbon monoxide poisoning–the circumstances of which are debated.
Dwight Frye played Wilmer. Frye would later be better known as playing weirdo characters in some of the Universal horror movies.
Otto Matieson played Joel Cairo. Matieson died at 38, eight months after the film’s release in an automobile accident in Safford AZ. He and Duncan Renaldo (“The Cisco Kid”) were traveling from Hollywood to Albuquerque. The car they were traveling in skidded at a curve and overturned. (Don’t know which one was driving.)
Recent stories about C02 shortages left me gobsmacked when I learned that we get C02 out of the ground. I always assumed any bottled C02 was being extracted out of the air.
Yesterday I learned that South Florida is the only place in the world where both crocodiles and alligators are native species.
Was Bill Hailey from South Florida? 
Wait!!! With all the talk about greenhouse gases and we have a CO2 shortage?!
I just learn from a video on frozen pizza that freon was invented at General Motors.
Interesting. I have heard that crocs are found in Louisiana but I can’t find any confirmation of that, which is surprising since gators are found in all the gulf states and northward through the Carolinas. Unlike alligators, crocodiles are tolerant of salt water so nothing was stopping them from occupying more territory. Plenty of times gators and crocs are misidentified as each other so reports of crocs in other states might just be confusion.
To add a very mildly interesting fact: Crocodilians and Birds are the only living descendants of Archosaurs, which were the ancestors of Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs.
I think CO2 can be separated in the process of liqiuidying oxygen and hydrogen and other gases from air, but it’s been much more practical to produce CO2 chemically. Small amounts of dry ice can be made from the air by wasting a lot of propane to cool air to the point where CO2 solidifies as dry ice.
Peter Lorre played Joe Cairo.
That’s another good description.
Agreed.
I also have a soft spot for Portuguese, though I hardly understand a word of it.
That was the 1941 version.
Heh, there’s an online comic I read called Quantum Vibe, the most recent arcs of which are set in a space-based arcology called Novo Paolo a.k.a. Bubbleopolis, where the official language is “Portanglish”, a creole that’s mostly Portuguese. I find myself using Google’s Portuguese to English frequently as a result.
To me, Portuguese sounds like Russians trying to speak Spanish.
Arthur Treacher played the role in the almost unrecognizable 1936 version called Satan Met a Lady. The Lady was Bette Davis.
Venice Italy doesn’t have sewer system, everything flows into the water of the lagoon!
Best Venice Guides - Sewage in Venice: how does it work? suggests that that’s only sort of true: no sewer system, but there’s a sort of low-tech filtration going on with the gatoli, and lots of septic systems that are collected rather than dumped.