If English wasn’t your first language, maybe if you learned English later in life, were there any words that you had a really hard time learning how to pronounce? Do you think that had to do with the sounds made in your first language?
Colonel.
Less of how hard it is to actually pronounce, more like how hard it is to believe it’s pronounced that way.
Just wait till you try “Lieutenant” in Britain or Canada.
You can find “leftenant” as a normal spelling in older texts. No one is sure why.
right?
Worcestershire
omg “rcester” words are so hard
Kernel
It was spelled with an R in the past, and they tried to change it to an L (because that’s how it “properly” should be according to its origins), but only the spelling stuck, probably due to everyone being illiterate anyway.
Ask a German to pronounce “squirrel.”
Or a French person.
This one’s actually funny to me. It’s a bit of a meme that francophones struggle with squirrel and anglophones struggle with écureuil, but I personally had no trouble with it. You just have to hear it once.
My francophone wife practiced saying squirrel for like 7 years before she was able to get it kinda right, so that’s very impressive if true. It doesn’t help that in my accent, it’s pronounced as one syllable. Even good approximations of the pronunciation that I’ve heard by French speakers are usually done in two syllables.
Or a person
Is it tricky? English is my first language and it doesn’t seem difficult to me, but I never gave it much thought. So fascinating.
It only has a single vowel, which is an r-coloured vowel…which most languages don’t have. For that matter, many languages don’t even have our “r” sound, so colouring a vowel with “r” is incredibly hard when you don’t even have that consonant to colour with!
Not to mention that after using that r-coloured vowel, you have a semi-syllabic L immediately afterwards. (Is squirrel one syllable or two? Depends on who you ask I guess!). As you may know, L and R are the same in some languages. And even if a language has both AND pronounces them the same ways as English (not necessarily common), they might not allow an L to follow an R! (Just like how we don’t allow R to follow an L)
Oh, and which vowel are we colouring? “i” or the “short I”. This is a very rare vowel, following a third dimension (tenseness) that the majority of other vowels don’t use. Not common in other languages, either!
So that’s the last two sounds.
The first three is a consonant cluster containing another uncommon consonant (w). And even ignoring that, s and k can’t always be combined together in other languages.
So literally every sound in the word “squirrel” has something foreign and rare about it to many languages immediately as you start to get past that “s” sound. Brutal.
It’s not the trickiest, but it’s not exactly easy to say it like the native speakers.
What’s the problem with Skouirrelle? :^)
Ends up as “skwiwwl” for me every time…
Worcestershire sauce
English as my first language and I can’t get that one right either.
No one can.
Wuh ster shuh. I live in that county, it’s definitely over-hyped.
Oh, one really pronounces the ‘shuh’ part? I was told it’s just the first two syllables.
Just the first two syllables would be Worcester, which is also a place.
You don’t say the last ‘R’? I’ve always said it ‘woo - stur - sure’ or ‘wi - stur - sure,’ depending on how fast I say it.
That’s because you’re American. That’s how you say it with an American accent. Like think about how Brits say “sure” vs how Americans say “sure”. Americans pronounce the R far more.
Americans are harder on their R’s where they’re written, but Brits take the R’s out and put them softly in other places where they aren’t written (to the American ear)
It helps to break it up.
worce - ster - shire
“Worcestershire sauce is the worst.”
“Thousand island is worster.”
“‘Worster’? Sure.”
I say it wuss tuh sure
odd, I never had an issue with WarChester sauce.
When I was younger it was any word where an R is followed by an L. Girl, world, twirl… im better at them now tho
I know a kid who can’t say these either but I didn’t put together what it was before.
“The”. The “th” in “the” is the only sound in English I can think of that doesn’t have a very similar counterpart in Dutch. The closest you could get using just Dutch phonemes would be “zuh” or “duh”.
Of course, we have two th sounds just to make things more fun
But dutch people area native English speakers
Don’t feel bad, everyone. English pronunciation IS difficult, though through tough thorough thought, you can do it!
You must say this out loud as an affirmation.
The number of native English speakers who can’t pronounce “specific” and instead say “pacific” is too damn high.
“sp” cluster can be hard. So can “sk” at the end of a word. Hence why you can get “axe” instead of “ask”
Little kid me would agree about the difficulty with the “sp” cluster. “Spoon” came out as “psoon”.
Suh-poon is also reasonably common!
It if you speak Spanish, “Es-poon”!
When I was first learning as a kid, I used to pronounce three as tree. I actually got picked on a lot because of it, because middle schoolers are assholes
Pilots say tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
I never knew there was a difference, whoops
The th sound is honestly a bit difficult. Three will end up sounding like either tree or free, but not three. Usually I just pronounce it as a slightly weird T. I have quite a Dutch accent anyways and that just something y’all will have to deal with ;p
Two people scored the same after the first five. They were the… sixths.
It’s a near miss of biting my tongue every time.
sixths-sevenths?
Learn to speak English with an Irish accent (like Lenin) and no one will bat an eye at you saying tree.
It’s a common one my brother! The F sound in free is made where your top teeth are on your bottom lips, and tongue is retracted. The th sound is when your tongue is resting on or just behind your top teeth, almost like you’re smiling.
Also to add, a lot of native speaking adults also struggle with the th sounding words, generally due to local accents.
Rural and squirrel
Oh god yes
German?
I always thought it was amusing that both German and English have equally difficult words for those fuzzy little rodents. “Squirrel” and “eichhörnchen.”
Skwrl - no vowels
Sk-wirrel is how it usually breaks down in my head
Rural juror.
30 Rock had some of the best wordplay I’ve ever seen in any show.
yeah, that and like Arrested Development 😂
English is my first language but saying “edited it” drives me crazy.
As a math teacher, I hate “sixth” or “sixths.”
so hard to say omg
Same goes for ’ pocketed it’
And my first language is Dutch, but like to speak English
Agree! I seem to add an extra “dedede” in there.
For most new native English speakers, it’s Spaghetti (pisketty) and Elephant (efalent). For my son it was Caterpillar (calapitter). I struggled with pronouncing Uncomfortable. I wanted to say every syllable.
You would be accurate if you pronounced every syllable of the word uncomfortable. Americans are just lazy, not pronouncing every syllable. Nobody would look at you strangely if you pronounced every syllable of that word. It would just seem like you’re emphasizing HOW UNCOMFORTABLE you are if you pronounce every syllable of the word :-)
No, I mean that as a kid, I wanted to say every syllable, but I found it difficult. I could hear adults saying it the easy way, but I wanted to know the real word. I loved to read as a kid, and soaked up every word I could find.
calapitter aww
I know, my wife would melt every time he said it.
ME TOO omg
I wouldn’t say struggle, but I did wonder for a while how to pronounce “anemone”.
Everyone has trouble with that one. There’s even a joke about it in Finding Nemo. I don’t imagine most English-speakers can spell it offhand.
I was listening to a best-selling author’s recent audiobook, and the professional voice actress messed this one up. So you’re in good company. Really, who can we blame but the Greeks?
That sounds like a universal truth if I ever heard one.
I’m having a whole cognitive dissonance moment because I could’ve sworn it was “anenome”. I even studied this in college and have an ecology degree. Likely over the last twenty years I convinced myself that the common incorrect pronunciation is correct, but I immediately looked it up and then tried to rationalize that it was some sort of mandala effect. The simplest answer is that it’s confabulation on my part, and I’m wrong.
Corollary. Not only I can’t say it out loud, I can’t even form it properly with my inner voice.
It’s the names Korra and Larry put together.
English is my first language and I still mess up “pluralism” from time to time.
Ignominious anthropomorphic pauciloquy.
I think many, many native speakers would struggle with those too so if you’re at that level you’re doing really well. Congrats!
The two first are pronounceable, the third not so much, for me at least 😅
I can pronounce it but I don’t think you have too much to worry about pal…I’ve come across that specific word about three times in my whole life.
I always pronounced “only” as “on-lie”. I heard other people say “only” and couldn’t understand what they meant.
