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?
Ask a German to pronounce “squirrel.”
The delightful thing is that it works in reverse also: ask a native English speaker to pronounce “Eichhörnchen.”
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 number of native English speakers who can’t pronounce “specific” and instead say “pacific” is too damn high.
“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”.
But dutch people area native English speakers
I always pronounced “only” as “on-lie”. I heard other people say “only” and couldn’t understand what they meant.
Rural and squirrel
Oh god yes
German?
Rural juror.
30 Rock had some of the best wordplay I’ve ever seen in any show.
yeah, that and like Arrested Development 😂
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.
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
Ignominious anthropomorphic pauciloquy.
‘Anthropomorphous’ is still like a tongue twsiter for me
I mean as a first language speaker, it is.
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 personally am having a hard time with “overwhelmingly”
knowing how to spell definitely, and pronouncing drawer.
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.
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).
Words starting with th- (th-fronting) and plurals ending in -ths, -sps, etc.
