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?
There are words I’ve only ever seen in writing and have no fucking clue how to pronounce.
Sometimes my partner and I disagree about the pronunciation of a word, only to eventually look it up and both be wrong.
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.
Rural and squirrel
Rural juror.
30 Rock had some of the best wordplay I’ve ever seen in any show.
yeah, that and like Arrested Development 😂
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
I always pronounced “only” as “on-lie”. I heard other people say “only” and couldn’t understand what they meant.
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…”
AGREED about English pronunciation, I don’t think anybody truly understands
Sheet / Sheep / Shit / Ship
texts, clothes. consonant clusters.
Words starting with th- (th-fronting) and plurals ending in -ths, -sps, etc.
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.”
‘Anthropomorphous’ is still like a tongue twsiter for me
I mean as a first language speaker, it is.
I think I was just pronouncing everything wrong for the first several years I was speaking English because I learnt English from books and never heard most words out loud. But I don’t remember anything being physically difficult to pronounce in terms of emulating how it’s said when I first hear it pronounced “correctly”.
“sorry”. I mainly use English in my daily life and at work for several years now, but cannot make it not sound like “sowy” or roll “r” too much.
[the]
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)
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).
