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What’s the hardest sound to produce...

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
15 messages over 2 pages: 1
JS-1
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 5985 days ago

144 posts - 166 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 9 of 15
01 July 2009 at 4:50pm | IP Logged 
I think the hardest for me when I was younger was "sps" -as in crisps. I have a friend
who never pronounced his "th" sounds owing to his regional accent. He became a teacher
late in life and now feels he should speak "properly", so he has added in the "th". It
sounds ridiculous, as is often the case when an adult tries to change their accent. I
think it is as difficult to acquire an accent in your own language as it is in a foreign
one.
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6013 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 10 of 15
01 July 2009 at 4:52pm | IP Logged 
I grew up in an area of Scotland where there's a lot of svarabhakti vowels. I couldn't say "girl" or "film" as a single syllable.

Not a problem now -- I can switch between Scots and standard pronunciations as I go.

I've never dropped my Rs though, except in the word "servers" -- which is a word you have to say a lot working in IT...
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cranberry
Newbie
United States
Joined 5653 days ago

9 posts - 9 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 15
01 July 2009 at 6:48pm | IP Logged 
fairyfountain wrote:
The French R. If I'm teaching an American friend how to pronounce French, I have to overpronounce the R intentionally. I tend to swallow it - it may be a regionalism, and speaking English a lot made me do it more often, for some reason. I tend to say "avoih" instead of "avoir", for example, but most people don't call me out on it. I guess it can happen in quick speech, too.
By the way, partly swallowing R's in French is nothing but a regionalism - people who live in the French isles do it more often, but I believe it is quite common.

I actually don't have trouble with the French r's unless they're in the middle of words (kind of like in English, haha).

I have more trouble differentiating between the "ou" and the "u" sounds in French.

How do you do it?
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chloem14
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5692 days ago

21 posts - 23 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French, Latin

 
 Message 12 of 15
01 July 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged 
I really struggled with the hard "c" and "cl" sound in English as a child. Until the age of about 5 or 6, my "c" came out as "t", so cat would become tat, cannot tannot, my name chloe I would pronunce Toey, and clinic tinic, and so on and so forth. Speech therapy was arranged through school, which sorted the problem within a few months, and I've never had any issues with it to date.
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Thatzright
Diglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 5674 days ago

202 posts - 311 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English
Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian

 
 Message 13 of 15
01 July 2009 at 7:52pm | IP Logged 
I botch the rolled R that Finnish has quite often (I imagine this will happen with Spanish too once I get to that language). Usually it's because I'm talking too fast or have just come inside on a cold winter day (or am out in the cold), but sometimes when talking even at a regular pace, with everything seemingly okay, it doesn't come out correct.
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Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5
Joined 5768 days ago

2256 posts - 4046 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 14 of 15
01 July 2009 at 11:44pm | IP Logged 
"zw" in German (approximately "tsv" in English; yes I am too lazy to look up the exact IPA signs); especially when a word begins with that consonant cluster.
As a child I simply replaced it by 'd', and even as a teenager I had problems with the word "Zwetschge"

Edited by Bao on 01 July 2009 at 11:45pm

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KanadierThom
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5978 days ago

15 posts - 17 votes
Speaks: English*, German, French
Studies: Icelandic

 
 Message 15 of 15
02 July 2009 at 3:25am | IP Logged 
When I was a child, around 5 or 6, I noticed that the final consonants in the word sixth
[ksθ] were hard for me to say, and sixths [ksθs] even more so (although I don't recall if
I discovered that later, I don't know why a 6 year old would be thinking about fractions
and mixed numbers). Another apparently tough one for English speakers is the ending to
fifths [fθs]; I think a lot of people just say [fts] or [fs] or [θs].

Hope my IPA symbols are right.


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