Asklemmy

55608 readers

469 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

For both native and non-native English speakers: what word or phrase do you find especially difficult to pronounce? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

65 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

(page 2) 15 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Ibuthyr@feddit.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

I know most Germans struggle with the word "squirrel".

[–] currawong@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Hierarchy...

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

i used to have difficulty pronouncing the "th" sound as a child too. i would use the same accent my parents did when they used it in words like "three" and i can remember celebrating the moment i realized that i said the number "three" correctly, naturally and without a thought.

ever since then, i've struggled with NOT pronouncing the "th" sound when i speak words that require the hard rolling-r sound like in the spanish word "tres", so go figure. lol

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I am becoming more convinced that I should have been a voice actor......

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 weeks ago

Paw and Poor sounds like the same word in my dialect, so I have to put in effort to switch to Received Pronunciation when I need to differentiate

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Non-native but spent a lot of my life living in English-speaking contexts. I know how to pronounce it, but my tongue seems to like tripping up over "hospital".

[–] zikzak025@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For me, probably "specific" and "interdisciplinary"

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] NahMarcas@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The ones with "ch", the laboratory coworkers laugh when I pronounce "chemistry"

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments