[shazar]

Aren't week/weak and piece/peace pronounced exactly the same?

[ericbarrett]

I'd pronounce those the same (western US accent), but it can vary. Check out the caught/cot merger, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger

[irrational]

They are for me. Exactly the same pronunciation and emphasis. Maybe there are some dialects of English where they are not pronounced the same.

[3pt14159]

They're really quite close, both pairs of them. But the emphasis isn't quite the same as most people speak it.

[NovemberWhiskey]

As a speaker of fairly standard British English, I would say they are homophones; I tried but couldn't find any natural way in which I could pronounce them differently.

[shazar]

dictionary.com shows both with the same IPA: \wik\ and \pis\.

[ff7c11]

I think they're identical.

[danielheath]

I’m sure, in many accents, that they are. Definitely not the same in Australian Strine.

[hunter2_]

As an American, I knew about Straya but this is the first I've heard of Strine. Or should I say Murican :)

[no_carrier]

They're identical in Australian English.

[danielheath]

Which one?

[leephillips]

They are identical. I think he was making a distinction between {week, weak} on one hand and {wick} on the other (but I was also initially confused by the way he put it). This is a big hurdle for native Spanish speakers as well, because i in Spanish is always pronounced as "ee". There seem to be a lot of embarrassing word pairs around these vowels; sheet, beach, etc.

[dvirsky]

Yeah what I meant is that it just increases the possibilities of awkwardness. Piss of cake, piss process, etc.

[chrisweekly]

Yes, they're homophones.