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Hardest phoneme you’ve ever faced | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 1 of 48 09 October 2010 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
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What is the hardest sound in any language you've ever been faced with? Did you just give up, or did you decide to press on until you mastered it? Have you ever felt that your progress in a language has been hindered because of a difficult sound? Has a language's phonology ever discouraged you from learning that language? Edited by Levi on 09 October 2010 at 4:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5928 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 2 of 48 09 October 2010 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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Mandarin was the first language I ever tried to self-study (when I was 12) but I gave up after only a month or so because I thought the tones were too difficult.
I love the sound of Arabic and it's high on my hit list, but I keep putting it off because some of the sounds seem so hard to pronounce! Of course, this is probably just going to make it harder in the long run since as I get older these become even more difficult to pronounce accurately. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5552 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 48 09 October 2010 at 9:21pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I can't very easily put it down to one phoneme, but the concept of softness in Russian sometimes trips me up. Especially soft "рь" in words like фонарь, слесарь, пекарь, дикарь.
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| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5607 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 4 of 48 09 October 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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Until I came to Germany, I had had no idea I'd been pronouncing the "ch"
incorrectly...no one had ever explained the sound to me (my first two years of German were in High School, and there's lots of things my teacher never bothered to tell us..) It took forever and a day to more or less "conquer" the sound, and a lot of my patience. Not being able to perfectly pronounce simple words like "ich" really got at me. Differentiating between "ö" and "ü" as well was not walk in the park. I still can have some trouble when lots of "difficult" sounds come together at once, for example "ich möchte ein Bröchten" or something like that, then I'm just like omg!! But that in no way discouraged me from continuing German :-) Once you've gotten so far, you can't just give up! Swedish and it's tonal system has also given me it's share of hard times, but the language just sounds so pretty with it, I wouldn't want it not to have it! Just practice, practice and more practice I suppose, and never lose sight of the prize. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5797 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 48 09 October 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged |
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Possibly the retroflex consonants in Hindi, but that was overcome by simple physical practice. I'm still having problems with Basque S and Z, because they're both similar to things I already know, but different in a way that's fundamentally unlike anything else I ever have to do with my tongue.
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| akprocks Senior Member United States Joined 5072 days ago 178 posts - 258 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 48 09 October 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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easy, ġ and ł(dot on bottom). those each took me about a month of saying them to myself to pronounce each correctly. No sound in English is similar. Also the rr in Spanish took me a few days.
I imagine the nasal consonants of the Mayan languages would be especially challenging. Edited by akprocks on 09 October 2010 at 10:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5067 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 7 of 48 09 October 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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The Finnish "Y" and "Ö" both gave me a fair bit of trouble in the beginning. They're both sounds that are actually present in English now that I have thought about it, but it took me a while to train myself to say those sounds properly. Also, saying the "k, p, and t" without aspiration still gives me a lot of trouble. K and T aren't so bad for me anymore, but I still usually mess up the P.
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| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5435 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 8 of 48 09 October 2010 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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Korean "jj" and Spanish "rr." I can pronounce the problem I have in Korean, but I have to be super aware of it and speak slowly. I dabbled in Spanish for a little bit, and yeah, "rr" raped me.
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