MCK74 Newbie United States Joined 3225 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French
| Message 9 of 26 27 January 2016 at 5:53pm | IP Logged |
There are words that are difficult to pronounce in other languages even if the language's
phonology may not be that difficult.
For example, I've had problems saying "desafortunadamente" in Spanish and "primierement"
in French, even though I don't think Spanish or French is very difficult to pronounce
well enough for native speakers to understand.
And of course there is how well you can pronounce it, such as sounding like a beginner or
having a convincing native accent.
Edited by MCK74 on 27 January 2016 at 5:54pm
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showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6082 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch
| Message 10 of 26 03 February 2016 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
French is hard to pronounce :)
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Obogrew Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3274 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, German Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Spanish, Serbian
| Message 11 of 26 07 February 2016 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
I think Adyghe language will be impossible to pronounce for 99% of world population
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=er63W_LoePs
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Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5133 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 12 of 26 07 February 2016 at 11:06am | IP Logged |
Arabic, it really tortures our throat.
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6123 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 13 of 26 08 February 2016 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
Chinese seems massively confusing. I asked a Chinese guys at work, how do we pronounce your name, and none of the English speakers could get it right. And, I know they hate hearing us butcher their names, so they make up random American names to use instead, but that's not right.
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luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 14 of 26 10 February 2016 at 11:05am | IP Logged |
A graphic of phonological distance would be helpful.
Although not the same thing, here is a graphic of lexical distance.
Here is a table of Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) distance.
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Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5306 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 15 of 26 11 February 2017 at 4:52pm | IP Logged |
jeff_fontaine wrote:
So, the question: "What language is difficult to pronounce?", should be reformulated to be "What language is difficult to pronounce for people who only speak American English?" for example. |
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Nah, we can formulate a general question: What kind of differences between one's native and the target language make it difficult to master the pronunciation of the target language?
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reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6445 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 16 of 26 11 February 2017 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
Difficulty of perception and articulation,
differences in syllable formation, stress etc.
Generally speaking, "differences". Learners with a
rich sound inventory may have an initial advantage.
Such learners may however introduce in their
pronunciation characteristics that don't exist in
the target language. Other learners can bridge this
initial gap.Desafortunadamente doesn't sound too
difficult to me because I have been exposed to
"sfortunatamente" and "malheureusement".
Edited by reineke on 11 February 2017 at 6:20pm
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