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?
Don’t feel bad, everyone. English pronunciation IS difficult, though through tough thorough thought, you can do it!
I have to perform a context switch between “v” and “w” sounds, so words and phrases that contain both (e.g: “very well”) sometimes end up with only “w” sounds. (My native language does not have a regular “W” sound)
But even after 20 years speaking it, English pronunciation is complete nonsense. Most of the time, you just need to memorize the words. Because trying to figure out how to say something, you also need to know if the word is borrowed from any other languages that use Latin alphabet, and then pronouce it pretending to speak that language. Simplest example: Mocha (moh-ka) and matcha (maht-cha). But there are countless borrowed words that don’t change spelling in English.
I once watched a German YouTuber talk about learning English and how quickly she improved when she started working in an English office because she _ had_ to. In the video she says one of the things she’s always had difficulty with but is now much better at and almost never slips up on now is vs and ws. Then, immediately afterwards in the next sentence she goes “now in this wideo…”
texts, clothes. consonant clusters.
Words starting with th- (th-fronting) and plurals ending in -ths, -sps, etc.
“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
I always pronounced “only” as “on-lie”. I heard other people say “only” and couldn’t understand what they meant.
Colonel.
Less of how hard it is to actually pronounce, more like how hard it is to believe it’s pronounced that way.
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.”
My friend has a hard time pronouncing ‘teeth’. Just comes out sounding like ‘tits’
the things i remember struggling with were getting the stress right and hyperforeignisms (that is, concentrating so hard on getting the difficult “w” and “th” sounds that i would pronounce “v” as “w” and “s” as “th” by accident. i was once asked if my native language had a “v”, because that was the one i seemed to be struggling with)
I wouldn’t say struggle, but I did wonder for a while how to pronounce “anemone”.
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.
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.
[the]
knowing how to spell definitely, and pronouncing drawer.
Definitely’s spelling is easier if you recognize that the root word is finite. De-finite-ly.
It’s not finate. That’s not a word (unless it’s some bullshit word no one ever uses).
For others, in my accent drawer rhymes with door and or. All spelled differently to get the same sound. None of the three are spelled phonetically by the ‘rules’ of English. They should be drore, dore, and ore.
Incidentally, ore is a word. But you’re right.
Worcestershire sauce
odd, I never had an issue with WarChester sauce.
It helps to break it up.
worce - ster - shire
“Worcestershire sauce is the worst.”
“Thousand island is worster.”
“‘Worster’? Sure.”
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.
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.
I’m American though.
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)
I personally am having a hard time with “overwhelmingly”
