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?
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.
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
I am becoming more convinced that I should have been a voice actor…
Sphere or Sphincter
Months. The S after the TH as in THink vs THe, is difficult.
Stumbled on this tongue twister in the wild. It’s freaking impossible.
Soldier shoulder surgery.
My children’s optometrist is a place called “Tropical Optical”. I can’t do it.
Unique New York
Ostentatious Austin, Texas
I have trouble with “sixths”.
and “twelvths”
Any combination of “th” and “s”. Like “months”, " clothes", etc.
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.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.
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.
My sister can’t say sea minerals without it sounding like semen roll.
I can not wrap my tounge around ambulance while in a sentence.
So as an Aussie I just call them ambos.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
