What word do you think is the hardest to pronounce???

[Hayseed]

Originally Posted by juacro

sorry, but it is not what I meant...I wrote FOCUS to give a sample of the hardest words to pronunce. My intention is to show the similarity with the expressions "fuck us" or "fuck you". I´m a Spanish speaker and those words represent confussions sometimes....

I know what you`re sayin`, juacro. I think Spanish has about five pure vowel sounds with major differences among each one. English has at least fourteen pure vowels with subtle differences among many of them. While you may have some difficulty hearing the difference between "focus" and "f__k us", I can assure you there`s a huge difference to native speakers. All I can tell you is to listen more carefully and you`ll probably be able to hear these differences. Keep in mind that not being able to put all these English vowels into your English pronunciation makes most Spanish accents very harsh & unpleasant to listen to. But, I HAVE heard Spanish speakers who can do well when speaking English; so it`s certainly not impossible. The one that bothers me most is the English "i" as in "hit", "bit", or "with". If you say "The dog bit me", that makes sense. But if you pronounce this lax "i" like "ee", the sentence takes on a different meaning, such as "The dog beat me". See?

[Coffa]

Of course sometimes these well-known pronunciation difficulties can affect non-native speakers even when they get it right. I am reminded of the story of the Italian man who was thrown out of a British hotel because he wanted a fork on his table and a sheet on his bed.

[joenuts]

I once fumbled over 'entrepreneurship'.

[joenuts]

Originally Posted by Coffa

Of course sometimes these well-known pronunciation difficulties can affect non-native speakers even when they get it right. I am reminded of the story of the Italian man who was thrown out of a British hotel because he wanted a fork on his table and a sheet on his bed.

Many of us here in the Philippines cannot pronounce 'sheet' (and sh#t for that matter) properly, so I decided my students needed to know the phonetic difference between the two words.

[Robbie_Durham]

I'm an English native, so I have very little trouble with pronunciation. However, it was only around 3 years ago when I finally learned how to pronounce "three" correctly. I had been pronouncing it as "free".

[englishstudent]

Hi tdol,

I checked the link you provided for "phthisis"
and on the website for "Ultralingua"
I saw TB spelled as "Tuberculosus",
whereas in other dictionaries, it is
spelled as "Tuberculosis".
Are both spellings correct?

Thanks

[alexrps08]

i have problems with 'spinach'. Due to influences from my 1st language.

[curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by tdol

Affect's a verb.

It could be a noun. In medical (psychiatric) use you could say 'He is suffering from lack of affect'

[SunnyDay]

Got a few more: aurora and rural. They're fine on their own, but when I speak quickly, my tongue flops on those second syllables.

[wrivas]

I can´t pronunce knowledge,