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Which English words are hard for you to pronounce?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by Harjus, Jan 8, 2019.

  1. Harjus

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    I thought this would be a fun idea for a thread. Anyone can reply.

    I am not a native speaker and my language is very different from English. Generally I think I can speak it pretty well but I just sometimes I just can't say some simple words. People wouldn't propably understand me without a context sometimes.

    Some difficult words for me:

    Water
    Squirrel
    Queer
    Square
    Hamburger (just burger is even worse)
    Genre
    Tree and three usually come out the same
    Angle and angular
    Word
    Earth

    I know there is a lot more but these are what I could remember.
     
  2. Mihael

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    #2 Mihael, Jan 8, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2019
  3. Harjus

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    "I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop. Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits." Can you imagine how that came out of my mouth? :poop: I can't... I can't say it properly... :laughing: I have to say that really slow.

    This just honestly made my day. :laughing: I broke my brain. Can't stop laughing. I just started innocently reading those out loud to test myself and that came out.
     
    #3 Harjus, Jan 8, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2019
  4. Mihael

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    My native language is a tongue twister in itself, so I guess I'm used to those :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
     
  5. Harjus

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    Mine is more of a brain twister I have heard. I must have a stiff tongue though. I have heard our language just sounds really monotonous.

    I have tried learning French but I just can't pronounce it. The word "mordre" is one of the worst. You should have heard me trying to speak it during a road trip. People just couldn't understand. I met a funny old French bartender. He didn't speak English but he thought I was hilarious. He could understand some of my gibberish but not much. Some huskies speak English better than I speak French and I studied it for 4 years.

    Also I can't pronounce Arabic at all. I find it even more impossible than French.

    Languages are really interesting and it's fascinating how differently people speak. Some languages have clicking sounds. It's pretty awesome. I wish I was better at learning languages. I actually had a lot of difficulties with English too. At the end I pretty much learned it so I could read Harry Potter books before they were translated.

    I have to learn to speak a third language for my studies and I have to take extra courses. I am still unsure if I can learn it or not. I should maybe try to find people to speak it with. Luckily it's easy to pronounce. That is comforting.
     
  6. Chiroptera

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    "World" is the worst. It is extremely hard to pronounce the "rld"!
     
  7. Harjus

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    Oh yes! I just skip the "r" completely. It becomes "wold".

    The English "r" is pretty unique actually I think. It was never difficult to me to pronounce on it's own but it's difficult in some words. I can say "rld" if I roll the r much easier.
     
  8. Browncoat

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    Anything with a "th" sound. Thanks to hearing damage in my youth, I never was able to learn and now cannot hear the difference between "th" and "f" sounds.

    I was eventually able to learn to pronounce the difference without hearing it, but I've been told by some that it occasionally sounds somewhat awkward when I do it.

    P.S. I am a native English speaker. Just fyi.
     
    #8 Browncoat, Jan 8, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2019
  9. SemiCharmedLife

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    If I haven't had enough caffeine, all of them lol
     
  10. RainbowGreen

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    Anything with ''th''.

    I just pronounce it as a T because otherwise I feel like I'm spitting. Things like ''Thorough'' are really annoying to pronounce. Otherwise, it's not that it's hard to pronounce, it's just that I don't know how the right pronounciation because English is so irregular in that aspect.

    Things like ''tomb'' and ''womb'', I always thought it was like, ''tom'' but with a b sound at the end, not ''toomb'' and ''woomb''.
     
  11. Kodo

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    Marlboro. The "rl" together is very hard to say. So I usually just skip it and say "marboro" instead.
     
  12. tystnad

    tystnad Guest

    people generally mistake me for a native english speaker but that’s an illusion i can only keep up if i’m not required to say the word “debt”. i can actually pronounce it correctly but when i have to do so casually, in a sentence, without paying attention...... i always end up saying “depth” instead. also, words that stem from either of the languages i speak other than english - i always struggle with those in english. saying “yacht” or “smorgasbord” in an english manner just sounds silly to me, my brain refuses to do it!
     
  13. SevnButton

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    I'm a native English speaker, but it would be more accurate to say North American, because it is very distinctly different from English as spoken in Great Britain. I think what makes Emglish difficult for many people is:
    - sounds and combinations that aren't used in many languages. It may feel rude to stick out your tongue to say 'th', but that's exactly what you have to do. The 'r' is different from many languages (not rolled) but if you can master that, it's another step to do 'rl'.
    - English uses lots of dipthongs (two vowel sounds joined together) and they're often spelled with a single letter. The English long 'a" is very close to Spanish 'ei'.
    - Every vowel has multiple pronunciations, at least a "short" and "long" form, and often more.
    - The connection between pronunciation and spelling is loose. The letter 'ough' are pronounced completely differently in different words, as in bough, through and tough -- all different.

    But thanks for making the effort! After all is said and done, what matters is that we're talking.
     
  14. AbsoluteNerd

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    Jesus, I'm a native speaker and I have trouble just thinking those words properly in my head when seeing them together. English is also weird because it sets all these rules only to break them more often than it follows them.
     
  15. HM03

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    When I was little I did speech therapy for quite a few years. Now I can pronounce most words fine, but I always have to actively think about soldier vs shoulder or else I'll screw them up lol. And very rarely I'll make a super high whistle sound when I say words that start with "sh".
     
  16. CactiCat

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    I’m a native English speaker and it’s very difficult for me to even attempt to say wold. I’m not sure why but it’s difficult.
     
  17. CactiCat

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    I feel like being a native English speaker has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, if I were to go to Europe, most everyone there would know English. But because English is so different from other languages, it’s hard to learn anything else. I’d say the easiest would be Spanish, but the sentence structure if completely different.
     
  18. Gutterpunk

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    i am a native speaker, but i love mountain biking and horseback riding and the like, and i'm also really accident prone, so i've beat the crap out of my nervous system, so i get tons of muscle spasms, especially in my face (mainly because i have split my eyelid all the way through, same with my upper lip, and i had seven stitches in my eyebrow) so every so often, my mouth will spasm and i won't be able to get a word out for like a minute or two until it stops.
     
  19. Joelouis

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    There aren’t many English words that trouble me but just looking at a word in Welsh gets me tongue-tied. You’ll need half of a bucket of spare saliva just to get through one sentence.
     
  20. Harjus

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    Very interesting responses! Tank you! I found new difficult words just from this thread... "Thorough" What... Why, English, why? "through" is also difficult. I also add "temporarily" to my list. (I say Marlboro like "Malboro")

    The "th" sound tends to be hard for people who speak my language. It's one of the first things I learned actually. I remember practicing a lot. But yeah, I can say "thank you" instead of "tank you" sometimes. It doesn't work every time... English has a lot of these "soft" and subtle sounds that are actually pretty hard to make. People from my country often speak English without those sounds. I have an accent like that too.

    Also the "sh" and "s" sometimes get mixed up. "Where she shines she sits"... Yeah. It still comes out really wrong. Don't let that one shine anything for you. I can't switch between "s" and "sh" that quickly.

    This is a grammar thing but it was hard for me to use the expressions for future. "Will do" was hard to understand because we don't have that kind of expressions. Haha, I also confused my foreign flatmate when they asked what is "please" in my language. Yeah, we don't have that. (why bother to say "please" if everybody knows there is no future?) I wonder if I sometimes sound rude in English because of that.

    I am glad I can speak English. It's such an universal language. I have few friends who can't really speak English or understand it. It's pretty hard in here nowadays if you are young and can't do the English. We study it for 7-10 years and even after that there are mandatory courses if you want higher education. My English has always been considered pretty bad by the way (and I have been shamed for speaking only 2 languages). High standards I guess... I know it isn't tat bad. :wink:

    I think accents are interesting and you don't need to sound "perfect" or like a native speaker. Your first language is a part of you and so is your history and uniqueness. I have never taken offence when people have pointed out my accent or dialect. It's just interesting and fun to compare these things.