The vowels in "pride", "proud" and "prod"

[CJ 4 life]

Are all these three vowels pronounced differently in American English? In "pride" and "proud", since they're diphthong, I only mean the FIRST vowel sound of the two that make up the diphthong. If they're all different, how do they differ from each other?

[Marius Hancu]

ALL different. Get to a good book or reference on pronunciation. Have a look at:

http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/pronunciation.html (http://legacy.lclark.edu/%7Ekrauss/toppicks/pronunciation.html)

Listen to them here (thanks, Rusty):

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word

Not sure if this is AmE (sounds like BrE to me), but it's anyway much better than the mess you seem to have now in your mind:-)