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?
Sheet / Sheep / Shit / Ship
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.
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.”
The delightful thing is that it works in reverse also: ask a native English speaker to pronounce “Eichhörnchen.”
Eye-ch-urn-ken?
Irish and we have that gutteral Ch sound in Irish so I feel like it’s a cheat code for us.
None of those ch’s are guttural and you skipped an h;)
So… eye-ch-churn-chen?
First bit like Ike (edit: or Reich)
The ch digraph in both instances of Eichhörnchen is pronounced closer to the way you pronounce the first consonant in the word “hue”. It’s closer to the front of the mouth than the one you’re thinking of in Irish. It’s ç in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s a different sound than the other way that ch is pronounced in German and has to do with what sounds/letters appear around it. The other pronunciation of ch in German is normally pronounced as x (this sound is the one you’re thinking of that’s in Irish) or χ.
That’s really clear, thanks. I learned a lot, including learning that I should not try to pronounce Eichhörnchen. :)
he last is more -chun
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? :^)
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.
AGREED about English pronunciation, I don’t think anybody truly understands
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…”
For turkish speakers generally, its every single multi-syllable word. In turkish, syllables arent stressed and most syllables are pronounced equally. And since in english stress is very important for pronunciation, my peers’ (and teachers in schools) speech is unintelligable
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.
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)
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.
I always pronounced “only” as “on-lie”. I heard other people say “only” and couldn’t understand what they meant.
My friend has a hard time pronouncing ‘teeth’. Just comes out sounding like ‘tits’
I’d suggest “choppers” but it would probably come out “knockers.”
Rural and squirrel
Rural juror.
30 Rock had some of the best wordplay I’ve ever seen in any show.
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
texts, clothes. consonant clusters.
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 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.
Words starting with th- (th-fronting) and plurals ending in -ths, -sps, etc.
English is my first language but saying “edited it” drives me crazy.
ME TOO omg
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.
calapitter aww
I know, my wife would melt every time he said it.
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.
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.
