For both native and non-native English speakers: what word or phrase do you find especially difficult to pronounce?
I used to think the "th" sound is hard because it is uncommon in my language, we do not use our tongues to hit the top teeth like that. But then, it became 2nd nature after living abroad for almost 20 years.
Recently i happen to work with a lot of architects and designers and 1 word comes up which I think is the most difficult to pronouncr: AESTHETIC.
It sounds very simple but if you break down the syllables, your tongue needs to do a bit of work.
For the British English version, the "t" in tic is pronounced quite strong, as in "tick". Mostly, your tongue only needs to worry about the "THE" sound, i.e. ES-THE-TIC.
In US English, the "t" is most often pronounced as a soft "d". This means "TIC" will sound like "DIC". So your tongue needs to flick up for the "THE" sound and then immediately flick down for the "DIC".
This gets even harder if you consider the adverb: AESTHETICALLY. A lot of tongue gymnasium involve...
Any other words or phrase that you think is dificult?
64 replies
I have trouble with "sixths".
and "twelvths"
My children's optometrist is a place called "Tropical Optical". I can't do it.
Unique New York
Ostentatious Austin, Texas
Months. The S after the TH as in THink vs THe, is difficult.
Most native speakers do not really pronounce the "ths". Typically you hear "mons".
Its a lot easier if you think of it as the same sound you'd get at the end of badum tiss
Stumbled on this tongue twister in the wild. It's freaking impossible.
Soldier shoulder surgery.
Native English speaker here. Aside from catching crap for regional accent differences, I didn't have any noticeable, repeating problems until COVID. I can't, for the life of me, properly pronounce
comorbidity. Even when I really concentrate on it, it tends to come out ascomorbibity. It really makes me sound stupid as hell.I'm from the American Southeast. I speak with a tarheel drawl. To listen to me speak, you'd think the word "rural" has four Rs in it. Rrrrl.
To be fair, r is a secret vowel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7DuvWVazpk
We'll eventually give up and thesaurus it.
Rrrrl. Rrrrl. RRRRL. Out inna woods.
You could always claim you learned English from Irish English speakers: they commonly substitute dental frictives with the plosives, so /th/ with /t/ or /d/.
And the nimmins are replaced by addabs.
My sister can't say sea minerals without it sounding like semen roll.
When I was younger I read and listened to a lot of English but didn't speak too much. It took me years to get a better hang of "Three" and "Free".
Thats ok, there are entire regions of London that have the same problem.
I can not wrap my tounge around ambulance while in a sentence.
So as an Aussie I just call them ambos.
February. I'm happy I don't have to say it often.
UK native speaker. I tend to pronounce it "feb-ə-ree"
Is there anywhere on earth that pronounces the R? FEB-you-air-EE.
In India, it's usually feb-ru-(v)a-ree. Our languages write words as they are pronounced, and we're too lazy to make an exception for English.
Yeah English phonics is a garbage fire. Just look at that last sentence.
Any combination of "th" and "s". Like "months", " clothes", etc.
Most native speakers do not really pronounce the "ths". Typically you hear "mons", "close".
I could see that in an Irish accent, but no I never hear that.
Here's a demonstration of what in taking about: https://youtu.be/o8WeXem5YMQ?t=551
He does say this is in American English specifically tho.
I used to find words that had the letter R followed by an L difficult. Like girl, world, etc. They're still a bit tongue twisty tbh
Those 'r's are silent. The previous vowel just gets lengthened.
Just drop the “r” English-style - “guhl”, “wuhld”. Easy!
Or you could go the other way and roll the “r” like the Seventh Doctor.
You know, a funny thing with the rolled R is that as a young kid I couldn't do it, so in 0th grade I basically had to take additional special classes to practice it, but then a couple of years later when we started 2nd grade and thus started english, I had trouble unlearning to roll my R's as it was so ingrained in my brain by then lol :3. So I basically flipped my problem around
English speaker - corollary.
It means to have the property of being a Toyota Corolla
Grew up in the US (the Deep South)… moved to England, have been here for like a bajillion years and unfortunately still sound American 😕
But for me it is crisps. Why do we have to say this word when it is so awkward?!?
You are not alone on this one.English is not my first language so I have to make a conscious effort with words that have STS sounds like: Ghosts, forests, dentists and crisps. Lol.
Glad to know I’m not alone, I don’t really understand why humanity has made things so hard for humanity at times… surely this can’t also be linked to greed like so many other issues?!? 😅😅
"Assthedick"
Now you'll never forget.
As a native english speaker, obsequious.
"Phthalates"
That's not an English word, that's a space catholic word.
I have a disdain for technical latin, Stop telling me I have hypernatremia; high blood salt is exactly as detailed and like 54 syllables shorter.
Australian here and with my bigan arse accent I struggle to pronounce the word "regularly"
I break it up to much when I read it into reg-u-lar-ly
If i say it is just roll through the last have and get regurrrly
Is your accent the one where "oh, no!" sounds like "ohr, nohr!"
In my tarheel accent, a consonant Y often gets sanded to an uh sound. Especially when speaking quickly it's not uncommon to hear a Carolinian say "REG-uh-lurr" rather than "REG-yew-lurr".
non native here
girl, world, rivalry
in ascending difficulty, i generally find soft Rs hard to say, tho after a few years, it became easier
"probably" is awkward for me. I used to drop the b's and pronounce it "pro'ly", but now I make the effort to use "likely" instead
“Prolly” is how I pronounce it in speech, especially in the middle of a sentence.
I feel like one of the hardest things to master for non-native speakers, especially those who speak Romance languages, is the pronunciation of consonants that occur in the middle of phrases. It’s not a hard and fast rule, and depends on the speaker, but those said middle consonants are often very understated, especially in fast speech. I can always tell a Spanish or French native speaker because they would pronounce it: pro-Ba-BLEE, with the clear, distinct, staccato-like intonation of their mother tongues.
Everything is difficult (I'm from Spain).
I am becoming more convinced that I should have been a voice actor......
Legislative.
For me, probably "specific" and "interdisciplinary"
Pacific
Sphere or Sphincter
Non-native but spent a lot of my life living in English-speaking contexts. I know how to pronounce it, but my tongue seems to like tripping up over "hospital".
Czech has this special Ř sound, which is somewhere between a rolling R and the S in vision (/ˈvɪʒən/). I'm learning Czech as a fifth language, so while I can pronounce it standalone or at the start of a word it takes all my focus to manage mid-word.
I have pretty much no split between four and thaw. Can’t even hear the difference when someone else does it.
+1 for "th". I'm from germany and it's like impossible to pronounce for me.
Paw and Poor sounds like the same word in my dialect, so I have to put in effort to switch to Received Pronunciation when I need to differentiate
I know most Germans struggle with the word "squirrel".
Hierarchy...
I don't know why but "drawer" was a word that was difficult for me to pronounce. In specific the 'aw' sometimes I say it as dr-awe-re other times i pronounce it as d-roar I don't know why it's strange to prononounce.
i used to have difficulty pronouncing the "th" sound as a child too. i would use the same accent my parents did when they used it in words like "three" and i can remember celebrating the moment i realized that i said the number "three" correctly, naturally and without a thought.
ever since then, i've struggled with NOT pronouncing the "th" sound when i speak words that require the hard rolling-r sound like in the spanish word "tres", so go figure. lol
The ones with "ch", the laboratory coworkers laugh when I pronounce "chemistry"
How are you trying to pronounce it? At least in my accent, the “ch” is just pronounced like a “k”…
KEM-ist-tree
In spanish is like "chocolate" mistry