[req2]

Unfortunately for you, not only are people notoriously (in linguistically savvy circles) bad at properly making and recognizing all of the vowel distinctions, you're also just wrong- affect and effect share a valid schwa initial pronunciation, and compliment and complement share their pronunciation.

The phenomenon you have fallen prey to is hyperarticulation, also responsible for the 'off-ten' pronunciation of 'often'. (Compare to soften, for example.)

Pronunciation is a bad place on which to perch your well-trained pride.

[jhancock]

I think you misinterpreted my post. I have zero "pride" in place here. I was simply responding to the parent post that some of these may not be homophones (at least according to my definition).

For the record, the OP's strong reaction to people getting the words wrong is not something that bugs me. I commonly mistype words like weather/whether and there/their.