"suzmccarth" <suzmccarth at yahoo dot com> wrote:

> How about leisure and ledger?

Doesn't work for me because I rhyme "leisure" with "seizure." But
"Rodge" and "Raj" do work for me (no vowel difference). I pronounce
"garage" and suchlike as [dZ].

For reference, I -- like everyone else -- got my initial accent from my
parents, who are from Detroit, MI and Rochester, NY, but it has been
heavily influenced by 41 years in Southern California. Most native
English-speaking, long-time SoCal residents seem to pronounce these
words as I do. New York, British, and Canadian pronunciation is quite
another matter.

-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/