# Hardest sound to pronounce



## HBZ55

What is the hardest sound you have ever tried to pronounce in a language you're learning? I only speak three languages which are Arabic, English and French and I didn't find any sound particularly difficult, but I struggled a bit with some vowels in French and the overall intonation of English.
Some people told me that they find the [q] sound very difficult to successfully imitate, and others told me the 3ayn letter is the most difficult, but I want to know the opinion of a larger group of people that have studied more than just a few languages.


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## sakvaka

The Swedish /ɧ/ and /ɕ/ have been the most difficult sounds for me, but I think they can be replaced with easier /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ without any confusion.

But I've always managed to avoid "difficult pronunciations" when selecting languages to study .


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## Hakro

When living in Paris, my first and last problem was the "r" sound, for example simply in "quatre". I knew how to pronounce it, but they never wanted to understand me, whatever I tried.

I can pronounce Swedish, German, English, Irish, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese awfully bad, but they never blame me. In France it's different.


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## wanpi

To me, the most difficult pronunciation as a spaniard is the double "e" in some words like "sheet". As the spanish only have 5 vowel sounds, and the english have 13.
So, my problem is that I pronounce "Sheet" and "Shit" just the same...


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## Tagarela

Hi,

For me, as a Czech learner, it is* ř*. But I also have some problems with rolled /r/.

Wanpi, I guess that you're not alone with the _sheet - shit_ pronunciation


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## JamesM

The vowel sound in the French word "feuille" is difficult for me as an English speaker.   Some of the consonant combinations in German are very tricky for me, such as "Letzte".


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## Au101

A lot of people have trouble with the retroflex "l", in IPA, this is "ɭ", and to give it its proper name, it is the "voiced retroflex lateral approximant". It is found in most Indian languages, I believe. I have personally studied the Tamil, Gujarati and Devanagari scripts and there is certainly a letter for that sound in all of these scripts. I know it to be used widely in Tamil and Gujarati and whilst it is used just as widely in many languages which use the Devanagari script, such as Marathi and Sanskrit, I am reliably informed that it is quite rare in Hindi, perhaps the most well-known of all languages to use Devanagari. Anyway, in these scripts, the corresponding letter is:

Tamil: ள
Gujarati: ળ
Devanagari: ळ

I, personally, have never had that much trouble with it, but speaking to friends who were born in England and learnt English as a child, but have decided to learn Gujarati or Marathi, in this case, as a second language, I have heard that they have trouble with this letter. "My teacher spent a whole lesson trying to teach me how to pronounce it and I still don't get it", was one "horror story". Even more problematic, for me, however, is the Tamil letter ழ. Technically, or so I'm informed, the sound isn't quite represented properly by the IPA, but the usual compromise, it seems, is "ɻ". I'm still not quite clear on how exactly this is properly pronounced, but it seems to me that it is pronounced even further back than the retroflex "l". It is, at least, an "l" of some description, although I did once read that it is pronounced "like an "r", but without the rounding" and in certain situations, it is close to an "r". Anyway, it is a very common sound in Tamil and I believe also in Malayalam. It is, I believe, possible to modify the Gujarati and Devanagari scripts to accommodate this sound in a transliteration, by using the modifying "dot" below the retroflex "l"s seen above, i.e.

Gujarati: ળ઼
Devanagari: ऴ

However, these are not, to my knowledge, native sounds.


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## enoo

Well ... the English "*th*" sounds still give me some trouble. A year ago, I discovered I could actually pronounce them the right way, but it requires me to pay attention to it while talking. 
Otherwise, I pronouce it the way I did for years, something like "*z*is is an important *f*ing" for example  (bad habits, heh... )

The Finnish and Spanish (rolled?)"*r*" are very difficult to me too. 
The Finnish *h* when it is before a consonnant (e.g. kahvi, tähti) although I'm sure this one must not be that difficult, but well ...



			
				Hakro said:
			
		

> When living in Paris, my first and last problem was the "r" sound, for example simply in "quatre". I knew how to pronounce it, but they never wanted to understand me, whatever I tried.



Eww, strange, I mean, it sounds difficult not to understand that word, even pronounced with a "r" that's not correct. Especially since in colloquial speech, a lot of people drop the end of the word and say "quat' " (/kat/).


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## Frank78

JamesM said:


> Some of the consonant combinations in German are very tricky for me, such as "Letzte".



Shouldn´t be that tricky.

It´s let + sta (as in stay just without the y)

I can´t pronounce a thrilling R. Although I´ve tried a lot. A friend of mine who speaks Russian and Polish told me that the tounge position is similar to the TH in English. Nevertheless I failed.


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## JamesM

What _shouldn'_t be hard rarely has much to do with what _is_ hard for a particular person.   I knew a German-speaking native who couldn't get the word "unfathomable" out without a lot of stumbling, despite her brilliant command of multiple languages.


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## Encolpius

Some Chinese consonants are very difficult to pronounce.


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## Kanes

From the languages I know I think mine has the hardest consonants, Bulgarian. From experience I think those are the hardest for foreigners to pronounce:

щ - sht
ж - zh
ц - tz


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## Benedicta

The sound that has always been a little bit difficult to me is the "ll" in Spanish, like in "paella" or "calle" (street).


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## berndf

Like many people who havn't learned it in childhood, I am still at war with the fronted "r" [r]. I know how to pronounce it and most of the time I manage. But in some cases I still have problems, especially if trilling is phonemic, like Italian or Spanish "rr", or in certain combinations, like "tr".


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## berndf

wanpi said:


> So, my problem is that I pronounce "Sheet" and "Shit" just the same...


This is a classical problem for native speakers of Romance languages as they don't distinguish between [ɪ] and [iː] (though most have at least 7 and not 5 vowels, like Spanish).

I remember a French speaking Swiss immigration officer asking a tourist "Verr do you leave?" "Pardon?" "I said 'Verr do you leaeaeave'!" "Pardon???"


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## RaLo18

I actually was never aware of the existence of such difference between shit and sheet.

Anyway, I've never had difficulties pronouncing a sound, but learning the difference between Arabic ث, ظ and ذ was pretty complicated for me.


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## sakvaka

berndf said:


> This is a classical problem for native speakers of Romance languages as they don't distinguish between [-i] and [I] (though most have at least 7 and not 5 vowels, like Spanish).


 
Did you possibly mean [i] and [i: ]? I assume that the main problem for them is the length of the vowel, not the height. 
Usually the vowel's actual "hue" doesn't even matter very much (well, in Finnish it doesn't ).


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## berndf

sakvaka said:


> Did you possibly mean [i] and [i: ]? I assume that the main problem for them is the length of the vowel, not the height.
> Usually the vowel's actual "hue" doesn't even matter very much (well, in Finnish it doesn't ).


No, I really meant [ɪ] vs. [iː]. The words shit and sheet differ in both, length and quality (I take it that you mean quality when you say "hue"), i.e. shit [ʃɪt] vs. sheet [ʃi:t]; but quality is more important. If you say [ʃɪ:t] (as you sometimes do in the exclamation shit!) no-one would understand sheet; and if one says [ʃit] it might sound a bit outlandish but one would still understand sheet - unless it is said by a Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard because polyglot people might anticipate that mistake.

This was actually the mistake the immigration officer made: he first said [liv] instead of [lɪv] and as he wanted to express himself more clearly he said [li:v]. This, of course, made things worse.


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## jazyk

He probably said [lif].


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## berndf

jazyk said:


> He probably said [lif].


  Modern French does not have final obstruent devoicing any more. Words like _définiti*f*_ come form an older stage of the language.


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## rusita preciosa

Same here for English: sheet/shit; sneakers/snickers; green/grin...

In French, not to "swallow" the end of the nazal vowels. Hard to explain, bot I think people whose native language dosn't have them and who learned French, would understand.


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## berndf

rusita preciosa said:


> In French, not to "swallow" the end of the nazal vowels. Hard to explain, bot I think people whose native language dosn't have them and who learned French, would understand.


No, I don't. German doesn't have nasalized vowels still Germans don't swallow them in French but they confuse differnt nasalized vowels, e.g. Germans pronounce _vin_ like _vent_.


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## bb3ca201

wanpi said:


> To me, the most difficult pronunciation as a spaniard is the double "e" in some words like "sheet". As the spanish only have 5 vowel sounds, and the english have 13.
> So, my problem is that I pronounce "Sheet" and "Shit" just the same...


 
Totally aside...that's hilarious.  Be careful not to give the wrong message


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## Erick404

As a Portuguese speaker, I also have a difficult time with the many English vowels that sound the same to me. 
The other day I was quite surprised when I read something in the Wikipedia that mentioned the different vowels in "bad" and "bed". I thought they were homophones, and even now I can barely notice a difference, let alone pronounce them with distinct vowels.

But I think the phoneme that troubles me most is the German R, [ʁ]. I think I pronounce it as a voiced version of [x], which is not as it was supposed to be.


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## berndf

Erick404 said:


> But I think the phoneme that troubles me most is the German R, [ʁ]. *I think I pronounce it as a voiced version of [x]*, which is not as it was supposed to be.


That is perfect! (To be pedantic,  [ʁ] is the voiced version of [χ] and not of [x] but I suppose that is what you meant).


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## Encolpius

Erick404 said:


> ...the different vowels in "bad" and "bed". I thought they were homophones, and even now I can barely notice a difference, let alone pronounce them with distinct vowels.



Hello Erick404, you should listen more to British English. The bad-bed difference in USA English is really imperceptible.


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## Suggar

HBZ55 said:


> What is the hardest sound you have ever tried to pronounce in a language you're learning? I only speak three languages which are Arabic, English and French and I didn't find any sound particularly difficult, but I struggled a bit with some vowels in French and the overall intonation of English.
> Some people told me that they find the [q] sound very difficult to successfully imitate, and others told me the 3ayn letter is the most difficult, but I want to know the opinion of a larger group of people that have studied more than just a few languages.


 
I simply 'hate' the word _être_. In English I used to find difficult to pronounce words such as _rhythm_ or _shrink_ but it's because in Spanish we don't have those consonantal clusters. In Spanish some people find it difficult to pronounce the 'ñ', 'rr' but I think it depends on their native tongue.


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## Erick404

berndf said:


> That is perfect! (To be pedantic,  [ʁ] is the voiced version of [χ] and not of [x] but I suppose that is what you meant).



Well, I meant [x], the _ach-laut_ phoneme, not [χ]. [χ] and [ʁ]  should be "produced" with the tongue further back in the mouth, shouldn't they?



Encolpius said:


> Hello Erick404, you should listen more to British English. The bad-bed difference in USA English is really imperceptible.



Well, then I'm not as bad (or bed? ) as I thought concerning these vowels.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Encolpius said:


> Hello Erick404, you should listen more to British English. The bad-bed difference in USA English is really imperceptible.



What? I can very easily hear the difference in AE.

In Hiberno-English there is also a clear difference between the two.


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## berndf

Erick404 said:


> Well, I meant [x], the _ach-laut_ phoneme, not [χ]. [χ] and [ʁ] should be "produced" with the tongue further back in the mouth, shouldn't they?


The _ach-Laut_ *is*[χ]. [x] occurs after /o/ and /u/ as in_ doch_ or_ Buch_.

PS: In addition, the /r/ phoneme has so many variations in German, I don't think many German would even notice, if you said [ɣ] (i.e. voiced [x]) instead of [ʁ] (i.e. voiced [χ]). I am almost sure I am floating between [ɣ],  [ʁ] and [R] in my own pronunciation too.


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## MoisesYU

A lot of people says that some Chinese consonants like sh, ch, zh and r is really different. I have to say that it is true. Like me, I'm a native Chinese, but in the accent of my living region, we never distinguish those sound, like the difference between s and sh, c and ch, z and zh, and we always pronounce r like y, it's interesting.

 But for me, some diffcult foreign sounds are:
1. rr or r from Spanish. In Chinese we have never sounded  this pronunce. It's strange and anormal for us. So when we started to learn Spanish, we costed a lot in this pronunce.
2. "L" in mongolian. I think it is not the same like all "L" in all language. It just like a "S" sound, but not the same. I really don't know how to describe this sound. I really spend a lot of work to imitate it.


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## Ghabi

MoisesYU said:


> A lot of people says that some Chinese consonants like sh, ch, zh and r is really different. I have to say that it is true. Like me, I'm a native Chinese, but in the accent of my living region, we never distinguish those sound, like the difference between s and sh, c and ch, z and zh, and we always pronounce r like y, it's interesting.


I bet most Chinese feel the same way, especially the r- thing (how many people really pronoune it as the textbook describes when they speak Mandarin, I wonder?)

I fancy one of the most traumatic experiences for a foreign learner of Mandarin is when he finds out that people in real life don't really pronounce many of the cosonants as the textbook dictates, which he's spent so many hours to master...


> "L" in mongolian. I think it is not the same like all "L" in all language. It just like a "S" sound, but not the same. I really don't know how to describe this sound. I really spend a lot of work to imitate it.


This sound (IPA: [ɬ]) exists in the Taishanese 台山 dialect, do you happen to know anyone who speaks this dialect?


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## MoisesYU

Thanks you so much. I think it's useful for me!!
I have found [ɬ] in wikipedia, I hope I can make it.


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## jamesosullivan

French diphthongs!!!!!!! Maybe that whole r-thing, especially in the middle of a word


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## MYRNIST

Not so much one sound, but distinguishing between ш (sh) and щ (shch) in Russian is impossible for me. I flat out cannot hear or replicate any difference between the two in speech.


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## Awwal12

> Not so much one sound, but distinguishing between ш (sh) and щ (shch) in Russian is impossible for me. I flat out cannot hear or replicate any difference between the two in speech.


But for me it is so natural.  "Ш" is hard (velarized), when "щ" is soft (palatalized). Learning Russian, you must always hear difference between hard and soft consonants, because there is not only phonetical, but also phonematical importance here. I advice you to place these two sounds in end of words (where following vowels don't interfere at all) and try to hear any difference (in the pair "лещ" and "утешь", for example). Or just ask any Russian to pronounce isolated sounds "ш" and "щ" very loud.  Position of the tip of the tonque is slightly different.

P.S.: As for me, Arabian emphatic consonants were the largest problem, especially when there are no following vowels after them. Even 'ain consonant was much more easy to learn. 
P.P.S.: Komi "ӧ" vowel (don't mix it with labialized "ö" phoneme in German languages or in Finnish) also was quite difficult, especially taking into account that all other phonemes of the language, including hard and soft pairs of consonants, are very simple for Russians. I haven't even found any appropriate sign for Komi "ӧ" in the IFA.


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## berndf

Awwal12 said:


> P.P.S.: Komi "ӧ" vowel (don't mix it with labialized "ö" phoneme in German languages or in Finnish) also was quite difficult, especially taking into account that all other phonemes of the language, including hard and soft pairs of consonants, are very simple for Russians. I haven't even found any appropriate sign for Komi "ӧ" in the IFA.


According to Wikipedia it is the mid central vowel, i.e. [ə]. Is it rounded or un-rounded? ([ə] can stand for both.)


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## Awwal12

Thanks, *berndf*. It really sounds very similar to "ӧ" in stressed positions. The problem is that Russian Wiki has no audiosample for this IFA sound, and none of Russian sources describes "ӧ" as [ə].


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## HUMBERT0

Benedicta said:


> The sound that has always been a little bit difficult to me is the "ll" in Spanish, like in "paella" or "calle" (street).


Which one? In Spanish “ll” is pronounced like: /ʝ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʎ/, /ʤ/. In Argentina they use /ʃ/, /ʒ/. Personally, I love how it sounds when used with /ʒ/ sound.


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## SDLX Master

I could never click to nasal languages; hence, French goes out the window for me.


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## Hyper Squirrel

I always get caught with _être_, as one person above mentioned. It's so hard to cut off early and not pronounce the second e! I also have a deal of trouble with œ when it's placed with another vowel, like in 'sœur'. I don't have as much trouble with pronouncing the letter 'e', but I still have a tough time. I was once told to say it like I was getting stabbed in the stomach and grunting in pain-- that actually helps a little.


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## Dean Turpin

Frank78 said:


> I can´t pronounce a thrilling R. Although I´ve tried a lot. A friend of mine who speaks Russian ...


 
I never learnt to roll Rs as a child and it's caused me immense frustration, especially during a Spanish module at Uni.

However, two years ago I learnt a little Croatian in preparation for a holiday, and it was the unusual HR combination that started to make it work for me: e.g., Hrvastki. Many people have told me it's to do with tongue position, but I think the real key is to encourage the expulsion of air at the same time, something accomplished rollers have never told me.

Maybe try a long H with before attempting the roll: hhhherrr.


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## Rallino

For me the most difficult sound is the Portuguese:* ão.
*
I just can't produce the "u" right after a nasal!



For Turkish learners, from what I see, the most difficult sound is the letter: *ı* which is equal to the Russian: *ы*.


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## Outsider

Here's a previous thread with a related topic, Hardest language to pronounce.



Rallino said:


> For me the most difficult sound is the Portuguese:* ão.
> *
> I just can't produce the "u" right after a nasal!


Try to start with "au", then make it nasal...


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## vaftrudner

HBZ55 said:


> Some people told me that they find the [q] sound very difficult to successfully imitate, and others told me the 3ayn letter is the most difficult, but I want to know the opinion of a larger group of people that have studied more than just a few languages.


I'm really interested in languages and have studied phonetics in detail, and ever since I've rarely had trouble learning how to make a sound (qaf took me a day to learn). But 3ayn... It is a beast. It took me three months before I could make it properly, and I worked really hard. I'm just glad it's over


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## Outsider

Here's a link to the ongoing thread about _3ayn_ in the Arabic forum.


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## Δημήτρης

*I pronounce [ɕ] and [ʨ] as [ʃ] and [ʧ] respectively, because honestly, I can't hear the difference.
* as [x] for the same reason.
*I can't pronounce nasal vowels after [ʁ] in French.

And sometimes, I won't force myself to pronounce any vowel other that [a], [e], [o] and _, if I know the person I'm talking to will understand that by [a] I meant [__æ] for example. What's the linguistic term for "being lazy"? _


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## Alxmrphi

> What's the linguistic term for "being lazy"?


The principle of least effort / 2


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## Δημήτρης

Alxmrphi said:


> The principle of least effort / 2



Haha, I was sure there was a term for it


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## portumania

Outsider said:


> Try to start with "au", then make it nasal...


or suppose -ão is -aum (não -> naum)


Hyper Squirrel said:


> I always get caught with _être_, as one person above mentioned. It's so hard to cut off early and not pronounce the second e! I also have a deal of trouble with œ when it's placed with another vowel, like in 'sœur'. I don't have as much trouble with pronouncing the letter 'e', but I still have a tough time. I was once told to say it like I was getting stabbed in the stomach and grunting in pain-- that actually helps a little.


but it is a silent e, as if it does not exist at all. in English words e.g. tak*e* you pronounce it?


Hakro said:


> When living in Paris, my first and last problem was the "r" sound, for example simply in "quatre". I knew how to pronounce it, but they never wanted to understand me, whatever I tried.
> 
> I can pronounce Swedish, German, English, Irish, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese awfully bad, but they never blame me. In France it's different.


The problem is not your accent, the problem is French people demand you to be able to speak their language perfectly. They just pretend they cannot understand you.


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## elirlandes

The Irish tripthong "aoi", where the "i" has a nasal quality to it is pretty difficult.

It is found in the word "Taoiseach" (which is what we call our Prime Minister), although when we use the word as a loan word in English it sounds "Tee-shock". Also in the fairly common name "Saoirse".


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## Pedro y La Torre

portumania said:


> The problem is not your accent, the problem is French people demand you to be able to speak their language perfectly. They just pretend they cannot understand you.



This stereotype tends to get overplayed. I've lived in Paris, Montpellier and elsewhere in France and never once encountered that. Where you might start getting looks of horror is if you're French _yourself_ and yet still speak badly.


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## berndf

portumania said:


> but it is a silent e, as if it does not exist at all. in English words e.g. tak*e* you pronounce it?


The sound exists in other contexts as well where it is definitely not mute, like in "gr*e*nouille". It is about the same sound as in English "bak*e*ry".


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## merquiades

For me the soft German ch in "ich" or "euch" is very difficult.  Also all the Russian soft consonants as well as the guttural i written a bit like "bi" (sorry I have no cyrillic keyboard).  As a teacher I find that by in large foreigners learning English have terrible problems distinguishing  seat, sit, set  or bead, bid, bed if you prefer.  In particular the one in the middle.


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## Ottilie

merquiades said:


> Also all the Russian soft consonants as well as the guttural i written a bit like "bi" (sorry I have no cyrillic keyboard).



*ы* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yery

 for me it's hard to pronounce the Spanish 's' .


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> For me the soft German ch in "ich" or "euch" is very difficult.


Try to say [j] as in "*y*ear" and stop voicing.


merquiades said:


> As a teacher I find that by in large foreigners learning English have terrible problems distinguishing  seat, sit, set  or bead, bid, bed if you prefer.  In particular the one in the middle.


This depends on the vowel system of your own language. It is certainly difficult for speakers of Romance language as they are lacking vowel lengths and distinction between open and close "i" and open and close "u". In addition, Spanish lacks distinction between open and close "e" and "o".


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## merquiades

Ottilie said:


> *ы* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yery
> 
> for me it's hard to pronounce the Spanish 's' .



Thanks a lot for the link.  I like the tip of pronouncing the e in roses.  Someday I´ll get it.  Have a look at this for the S in Spain.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/spanish/frameset.html
Click on "fricativas", then go to the fourth sound down on the list, you'll see a woman, and she'll show you how to pronounce the sound.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Try to say [j] as in "*y*ear" and stop voicing.
> This depends on the vowel system of your own language. It is certainly difficult for speakers of Romance language as they are lacking vowel lengths and distinction between open and close "i" and open and close "u". In addition, Spanish lacks distinction between open and close "e" and "o".



Thanks! That technique is really helpful!  I had never associated ch with a y before
Any insight on the ü of fünf?  

Right, most of the people I'm in contact with speak French or Spanish or some Romance language.  I spend most of my time thinking of words that contrast... peak, pick, peck... to no avail though


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Any insight on the ü of fünf?


Long "ü" as in "Hügel": Say [i:] as in "f*ee*t" and round your lips.
Short "ü" as in "fünf": Say [I] as in "l*i*ve" and round your lips.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Long "ü" as in "Hügel": Say [i:] as in "f*ee*t" and round your lips.
> Short "ü" as in "fünf": Say [I] as in "l*i*ve" and round your lips.



Ok, seems like long ü is like the French "lu", short ü is like the French "leur".


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Ok, seems like long ü is like the French "lu", short ü is like the French "leur".


Long ü: Yes - Short "ü": No.
The Vowel of French l*eu*r corresponds to short German "ö" which is a rounded [ɛ] as in "b*e*d".

The German short "ü" is in between Fench "u" as in "lu" and French "eux".

Have a look at the vowel chart here. French "u" and long German "ü" = [y], Long German "ö" and French "eux" = [ø], German short "ü" is [Y] while French "l*eu*r" and short German "ö" = [œ]. [Y] doesn't exist in French.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Long ü: Yes - Short "ü": No.
> The Vowel of French l*eu*r corresponds to short German "ö" which is a rounded [ɛ] as in "b*e*d".
> 
> The German short "ü" is in between Fench "u" as in "lu" and French "eux".
> 
> Have a look at the vowel chart here. French "u" and long German "ü" = [y], Long German "ö" and French "eux" = [ø], German short "ü" is [Y] while French "l*eu*r" and short German "ö" = [œ]. [Y] doesn't exist in French.



Check out this site, choose monophthonge then Vorn.  http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/german/frameset.html
I think my problem is vowel length.  All the long vowels in German seem stretched out much more than I was doing it.  To my ears, French u seems  kind of like short ü maybe a bit longer, and long ü is really long.  This seems like a good link for German sounds.  Thanks again


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## berndf

The lengths of the long vowels are exaggerated in the samples, especially the long "i".

For the the vowels i, e, o, u, ö and ü long and short vowels differ in both quantity and quality. The short vowels are always a bit lower and a bit more central than their long counterparts, similar to Classical Latin. The quality of the long ü corresponds to French u. The quality of German short ü does not exist in French. It is the same as with _ as in "live" vs. [I] as in "leave". French has no [I] and since French does not distinguish long and short vowels, for a French speaker "live" and "leave" are homophones. Similarly, a French speaker has trouble hearing the difference between "fühlen" (long ü) and "füllen" (short ü) although they differ in quality and in quantity._


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## tonyspeed

In my opinion all vowel sounds are hard to reproduce. Most people never get them right when they learn a foreign language. That's why they still have the accent of their mother tongue. For instance, the hindi sound ऐ is almost always pronounced incorrectly by native english speakers. It took me months to realize the correct pronunciation of this.

After that I can tell just from description that the aiyn arabi sound is one of the hardest.

The personal hardest for me were the retroflex flaps found in Hindi. To english speakers they sound like an R. ढ़ and ड़ . They are created by a tongue movement native to indian languages and not found in others except for some norwegian and swedish dialects it seems....Took me several hours.


----------



## sakvaka

I just discovered that even as a native, I can't pronounce the Finnish triphtong _äyi_  [æyi] fluently enough. 

Ok, it's very rare, but I somehow managed to surprise my tongue while trying to explain a situation where I was in a good position on the floor and people could see me very well.

_... ja miä näyin tosi hyvin sieltä._ "And I could be seen very well from there."


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## Tjahzi

I admit this is a ridiculous example, but really, this beats the crap out of all of your "hard" pronunciations. From Nuxálk:

[xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]

("He had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.")

and

[kʼxɬɬtʰsxʷ sɬχʷtʰɬɬtʰs (t͡s?)]

("You had seen that I had gone through a passage.")


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## Maroseika

Tjahzi said:


> this beats the crap out of all of your "hard" pronunciations. From Nuxálk:




I'm not sure this is a good example, because as explained in your link, in fact vowels are inserted unpredictably whereever they are need to simplify pronunciation. In other words, this is only the way to write down a word, using only "constant" signs.

For me the most difficult sounds are abruptive (ejecting) consonants such as in many Caucasian languages. Attempts to produce them result only in the pain in my gullet.


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## sufler

For me the hardest sound to pronounce is Arabic letter 'ayn: ع  .
It's like you were choking on it. I'm able to say it along with the vowel "a", but never with "i", "u" or alone (sukun).


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## vince

berndf said:


> Try to say [j] as in "*y*ear" and stop voicing.
> This depends on the vowel system of your own language. It is certainly difficult for speakers of Romance language as they are lacking vowel lengths and distinction between open and close "i" and open and close "u". In addition, Spanish lacks distinction between open and close "e" and "o".



Québécois (Quebec French) has both open and closed "i" (cf. "petit" vs. "petite") and open and closed "u" (cf. "tout" vs. "toute"), and open and closed "y" (cf. "du" vs. "dur"), but as far as I know there are no minimal pairs (like English "shit" vs. "sheet").


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## qwerta

I also have that terrible problem in English with the ship/sheep kind of sounds. I asked my teacher (native speaker) some time ago and as he was saying both words I couldn't even tell the diference between the 2 sounds. This not only brings problems with the sheet/shit but also with the beach/bitch....


But the hardest sound for me it's the "l" sound, like in "Lily", but that's a problem of myself, that could only be worked out with language therapy


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## mataripis

if your mind can say it, correct pronounciation will follow.masampata abe abe deketamapesan!


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## tFighterPilot

As a native Hebrew speaker who comes from mostly German Jewish descent, I didn't even know that /r/ can be pronounced with the tongue rather then the throat. Once I discovered it, it became my number one priority to be able to pronounce it. Sure enough, two weeks later I could pronounce the trill and some time later also the tap. Even more than a year later, it still gives me joy to pronounce it. I once thought I can't pronounce both versions of the English th until I discovered that I pronounce them all the time when mispronouncing /s/ and /z/. There are still a few consonants I can't pronounce, but these exist only in more exotic languages (for example, Labiodental flap)


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## myfakename

I'm surprised some people here had trouble with /ɬ/. It's very easy! Your tongue position should be like when pronouncing /l/, then try to pronounce /s/.

What I'm having most problems with is the Southern English (RP) tone of speaking. Almost all of the vowels and consonants are very easy for me, but I'm still speaking too high, which makes my "nurse" sound like /nɛːs/ ~ /nɜːs/ and "father" like /ˈfaːðə/ ~ /ˈfɑːðə/ - that is, something close to the correct pronunciation but still not quite it. Any ideas to speak with a better voice?



> For me the most difficult sounds are abruptive (ejecting) consonants such as in many Caucasian languages. Attempts to produce them result only in the pain in my gullet.


In Georgian, /pʼ/ and /tʼ/ are quite easy for me, but /kʼ/, /qʼ/, /tsʼ/ and /tʃʼ/ are a nightmare. /qʼ/ is probably the hardest consonant to pronounce that I've ever encountered.


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## darush

to me is "ts" at the first, like *z*wei in German or tsunami in Japanese.
it is not so difficult but is a question for me, why many languages make their speakers to pronounce it?!


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## myfakename

That's an... interesting question  I have the same towards /ʎ/. It's not hard for me, but very annoying to make (I'm never sure if it sounds right, all the recordings are confusing and sound like ~/j/). That's why I chose to be a _yeísta_ when speaking Spanish.


----------



## terredepomme

Almost no one would be able to pronounce phonemes that are out of IPA, such as ingressive sounds.


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## berndf

darush said:


> to me is "ts" at the first, like *z*wei in german or tsunami in japanese.
> it is not so difficult but is a question for me, why many languages make their speakers to pronounce it?!


You could ask this question about every other sound any language has. As you said, it is not so difficult to pronounce. Then, why do you ask this question about this consonant and not about any other, like k, n , l, .... I really don't understand.


----------



## merquiades

myfakename said:


> That's an... interesting question  I have the same towards /ʎ/. It's not hard for me, but very annoying to make (I'm never sure if it sounds right, all the recordings are confusing and sound like ~/j/). That's why I chose to be a _yeísta_ when speaking Spanish.



I know what you mean, /ʎ/, I recognize it and can pronounce it from Italian and Portuguese but (personally) I have never heard it pronounced this way in Spanish and I've been around a lot.  Where distinction is made I interpret it more as a sound close to what they call weakened d' in Slavic languages. i noticed the similarity when studying Russian (girl, money, where)


----------



## LilianaB

I think which sounds a person considers difficult depends mostly of what other languages he or she  speaks. I personally have never encountered any really hard sounds, but then I have never tried to speak any Arabic languages. I think some sounds in those languages could be hard to pronounce. Maybe Dutch sounds, some of them: they seem very glottal.  For me in fact Italian is a little hard to pronounce, due to its specific melody not to any particular sounds.


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## Jabir

The famous Arabic ع is pretty impossible to me.


----------



## tFighterPilot

Jabir said:


> The famous Arabic ع is pretty impossible to me.


If you can pronounce ح then ع is the same thing only voiced.


----------



## LilianaB

Where could I hear those sounds? Do you have any links?


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## myfakename

ح - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative
ع - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative



LilianaB said:


> Maybe Dutch sounds, some of them: they seem very glottal.


If you can pronounce Polish ch /x/, they should be no problem for you. Just try to make this sound further back in your throat, and then try to voice the results, to pronounce two of guttural R's, that is - the southern /ʁ/, and the northern /ʀ/.


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## LilianaB

It must be sort of like in Danish. Thank you.


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## tFighterPilot

myfakename said:


> ع - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative


Note though that it was recorded by me, so it's only as good as my description...


----------



## darush

berndf said:


> You could ask this question about every other sound any language has. As you said, it is not so difficult to pronounce. Then, why do you ask this question about this consonant and not about any other, like k, n , l, .... I really don't understand.


you know, it is easy to me *now, *after a lot of practise.
another question: it seems /X/ is not easy to pronounce for Germans in forign words, while there are many German words with this consonant, for example I heard khorasan pronouced by a German as korasan.


----------



## berndf

LilianaB said:


> It must be sort of like in Danish. Thank you.


The Dutch uvular "r" ([ʁ]~[ʀ]) is the same as in Danish, German, French and (European) Portuguese. There is nothing special about the sound in Dutch.


----------



## berndf

darush said:


> you know, it is easy to me *now, *after a lot of practise.


This surprises me. The mechanics of this sound is rather simple and it originated in many languages as a simplification of more difficult sounds, e.g. [tsi]~[tsj] in Italian "razione" is a simplification of [ti]~[tj] in Latin "rationem": If you say [tj] you have to move the entire front part of your tongue, if you say [tsj] you only have to move the tip of your tongue. It could be that you have a wrong idea how the sound is normally produced: The tongue is gently pressed against the palate with the tip of your tongue blocking the airflow just below the alveolar ridge, you build up pressure as you would for a normal [t] and then release the pressure by flipping the tip of your tongue downwards, but just a few millimeters. In this position of the tongue you produce the /s/ sound as it occurs, e.g., in European Spanish. 


darush said:


> another question: it seems /X/ is not easy to pronounce for Germans in forign words, while there are many German words with this consonant, for example I heard khorasan pronouced by a German as korasan.


This is because many Arabic or Persian loan words were imported from other European languages rather than directly from the original languages. Besides, German [x] occurs only in certain phonetic contexts: after back vowels. After other sounds the phoneme mutates to [ç] (as in "ich" [Iç]) and /x/ at the beginning of a word does not occur in native words. It occurs in some loan words, e.g. "Chemie" where the pronunciation varies from region to region.


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## darush

Thank you berndf


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## Encolpius

Is there anyone (from Europe) who does not find some Arabic consonants hard to pronounce, like pharyngeals?


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## Pedro y La Torre

Encolpius said:


> Is there anyone (from Europe) who does not find some Arabic consonants hard to pronounce, like pharyngeals?



The Maltese.


----------



## Encolpius

Pedro y La Torre said:


> The Maltese.



Oh, that's an excellent answer. Interesting enough people do not mention that language here in WR.
But after checking the Wikipedia I do not think there are so many pharyngeals in Maltese.


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## fdb

Maltese has only one pharyngeal: ħ like Arabic ح. It lacks the other pharyngeal ع, and also the "emphatic" (pharyngealised) consonants.


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## fdb

There are nearly 100 posts here now, but nobody (unless I have overlooked something) has stated the obvious fact that all sounds are easy for those who have been exposed to them since childhood and that no sounds are intrinsically difficult. In fact, babies famously experiment with all the sounds that occur in any human language before discarding the ones that are not confirmed by their parents. A good reason for exposing infants to as many languages as possible.

Of the languages with which I have occupied myself, the most difficult to pronounce is doubtless Vietnamese. It has six tones, 11 simple vowels (including 5 central vowels which all sound more or less identical to our European ears), and a huge number of diphthongs and triphthongs. That is my idea of difficult.


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## mataripis

for me the hardest sound  to pronounce i encountered is in the language of Panay Island, Philippines. It is commonly called "Aklanon" but in their native language it is " Ahk-k-khan". This language has the sound "ahkh" and i don't know what letter it represents.It has a fraction of y and g in between ahk sound.


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## ancalimon

People usually have difficulty pronouncing Turkish ı sound.

http://translate.google.com/#tr/en/ı


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## ahmedcowon

Here in Egypt, we have a problem with *Interdental consonants** θ** ð* although they are exist in Arabic *ذ ث*.

in Egyptian Dialect, *θث* became *tت* and *ðذ* became *dد*

In Standard Arabic (Fusha) and English, we usually replace θ with s and ð with z

Egyptians who want to be fluent in Fusha and English (with training) will be able to pronounce them


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## Encolpius

ahmedcowon said:


> Here in Egypt, we have a problem with *Interdental consonants** θ** ð* although they are exist in Arabic *ذ ث*.
> in Egyptian Dialect, *θث* became *tت* and *ðذ* became *dد*
> In Standard Arabic (Fusha) and English, we usually replace θ with s and ð with z
> Egyptians who want to be fluent in Fusha and English (with training) will be able to pronounce them



Interesting comment, you use "we", but maybe "some people" would be better, right? I cannot imagine *native speakers *might have problems with their own language. I haven't ever noticed English or Americans would have problems with their  θ ð or here Czechs with their ř. I think it would be interesting to start a new thread regarding hardest sounds among natives.  If that exists at all.


----------



## berndf

Encolpius said:


> I cannot imagine *native speakers *might have problems with their own language.


He didn't say that. He said Egyptians had this problems with Standard Arabic and English. Neither of them is their native language.


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## ahmedcowon

Encolpius said:


> Interesting comment, you use "we", but maybe "some people" would be better, right? I cannot imagine *native speakers *might have problems with their own language. I haven't ever noticed English or Americans would have problems with their  θ ð or here Czechs with their ř. I think it would be interesting to start a new thread regarding hardest sounds among natives.  If that exists at all.



I mean "all" not "some" but I'm here taking about Egyptians Only. Other Arabs don't have any problems with the two constants.

Arabs don't speak Standard Arabic (MSA) in their daily life. every country has its own version of Arabic

In Egyptian Arabic (EA), we replace θ with (t or s), replace ð with (d or z), replace ʒ with (g)

examples:

corn: MSA=ذرة *ð*orah / EA=درة *d*orah
liar: MSA=كذاب ka*ð**ð*aab / EA=كداب ka*dd*aab
this: MSA=هذا haa*ð*a / EA=دا *d*a
smart: MSA=ذكي *ð*aki / EA=ذكي *z*aki

culture: MSA=ثقافة *θ*aqaafah / EA=ثقافة *s*aqaafah
price: MSA=ثمن *θ*aman / EA=تمن *t*aman
eight: MSA=ثمانية *θ*amaaniya / EA=تمانية *t*amanya


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## Encolpius

berndf said:


> He didn't say that. He said Egyptians had this problems with Standard Arabic and English. Neither of them is their native language.



I know the Arabic issue is a little bit difficult, but I still find it strange, and I do not know how many people in Cairo speak, understand, use, study Standard Arabic, I have thought most people in Arabic countries are bilingual, but I know nothing about that language. Do people from Geneva have problems to speak Hochdeutsch?



ahmedcowon said:


> I mean "all" not "some" but I'm here taking about Egyptians Only. Other Arabs don't have any problems with the two constants.
> Arabs don't speak Standard Arabic (MSA) in their daily life. every country has its own version of Arabic
> In Egyptian Arabic (EA), we replace θ with (t or s), replace ð with (d or z), replace ʒ with (g)...



What Arabic do children start to learn in primary schools in Cairo? *I have thought *Standard Arabic! If they learnt it in childhood, there wouldn't be problems, right?


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## Pedro y La Torre

Encolpius said:


> I know the Arabic issue is a little bit difficult, but I still find it strange, and I do not know how many people in Cairo speak, understand, use, study Standard Arabic, I have thought most people in Arabic countries are bilingual, but I know nothing about that language. Do people from Geneva have problems to speak Hochdeutsch?



People from Geneva speak French, not Swiss German dialect, or standard German.
Arab dialects vary widely, Lebanese Arabic and MSA are almost different languages, ditto for Egyptian Arabic and "Hocharabisch".


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## ahmedcowon

Encolpius said:


> What Arabic do children start to learn in primary schools in Cairo? *I have thought *Standard Arabic! If they learnt it in childhood, there wouldn't be problems, right?



You are right, MSA is the official language and we study subjects in MSA but teachers are like us can't pronounce these sounds  

so, θ ð ʒ became s z g also in MSA (in Egypt only)


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## Encolpius

ahmedcowon said:


> You are right, MSA is the official language and we study subjects in MSA but teachers are like us can't pronounce these sounds
> 
> so, θ ð ʒ became s z g also in MSA (in Egypt only)



Oh, that's really very very interesting. I wonder if the situation is like that in all Arabic-speaking countries...but that is another topic...


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## olaszinho

ahmedcowon said:


> You are right, MSA is the official language and we study subjects in MSA but teachers are like us can't pronounce these sounds
> 
> so, θ ð ʒ became s z g also in MSA (in Egypt only)




So, you cannot pronounce these sounds in English, either.  Can you?


----------



## berndf

Encolpius said:


> Oh, that's really very very interesting. I wonder if the situation is like that in all Arabic-speaking countries...but that is another topic...


It might be unfamiliar to you because your native language has a rather compact regional extend. But in languages with many standardized regional varieties, the common standard above all these sub-standards is in essence a written, not a spoken one. There is a standard pronunciation attached to this but that is only used in very formal occasions or when speakers of different varieties meet. In German, this used to be like this too. Today, electronic media and strong internal migration have changed this but in some regions, where dialectal speech remained particularly strong, speaking Standard German is still called _nach der Schrift sprechen = to speak as it is written_.


----------



## cherine

ahmedcowon said:


> I mean "all" not "some" but I'm here taking about Egyptians Only.


I need to put a little clarification here:
All Egyptians who have not studied English since childhood, or don't have some sort of talent for languages, do find it difficult to pronounce these sounds. But the others have no problem at all. My friends who've been to English language schools since childhood pronounce these sounds without problem. I even have a colleague who learned English a bit later, but she has an excellent pronounciation.


> Other Arabs don't have any problems with the two constants.


What most Arabs (again, those who didn't learn foreign languages since early age) find it difficult is the letters/sound "p" and "v", specially the "p" that you'll often hear as "b".
They also have a problem with strings of consonants. So, words like student, strong, stop are pronounced by many as "*e*student", "*e*st*e*rong" and "*e*stob".


Encolpius said:


> I know the Arabic issue is a little bit difficult, but I still find it strange, and I do not know how many people in Cairo speak, understand, use, study Standard Arabic, I have thought most people in Arabic countries are bilingual, but I know nothing about that language.
> [...]
> What Arabic do children start to learn in primary schools in Cairo? *I have thought *Standard Arabic! If they learnt it in childhood, there wouldn't be problems, right?


We learn it at school, but we don't use it in daily life. The same goes for all the Arab countries. But as this is an off-topic discussion, I recommend these previous threads if you're interested:
- When do you use Modern Standard Arabic?
- Egyptian Accent vs. MSA
- MSA in everyday speech: how does it sound?


olaszinho said:


> So, you cannot pronounce these sounds in English, either. Can you?


Just to repeat what I said above: those who've learned them during childhood or have a good ear for languages have no problem with these sounds. The others (I think a majority) find them hard.


----------



## berndf

cherine said:


> All Egyptians who have not studied English since childhood, or don't have some sort of talent for languages, do find it difficult to pronounce these sounds.


I would be very surprised, if they had any problems producing the sounds. If you ask people to lisp they will usually come up with some beautiful th-es. The problem is usually differentiation, either from t/d or from s/z, depending on native language of the speaker.


----------



## cherine

Sorry if I wasn't clear, Bernd. I don't mean the sounds themselves in isolation, but in the middle of words. All, or almost all, Egyptians who haven't learned English since young age, pronounce "that" as "zat" and "thanks" as "sank*e*s". I started learning English at school when I was 9 years old, but it still costs me some effort to pronounce these sounds properly.


----------



## berndf

cherine said:


> Sorry if I wasn't clear, Bernd. I don't mean the sounds themselves in isolation, but in the middle of words. All, or almost all, Egyptians who haven't learned English since young age, pronounce "that" as "zat" and "thanks" as "sank*e*s". I started learning English at school when I was 9 years old, but it still costs me some effort to pronounce these sounds properly.


Yes, it is the same with Germans; separating words like _sick _and _thick _is the real challenge. What remains difficult even for German who speak English very well are _s _and _th_ in close proximity, like _mon*ths*_ or, even worse, alternating occurrences as in _*Th*ey *s*aw *th*e *S*ou*th*_.


----------



## cherine

Yes.  And even worse are things like: worse than, was thought that, this thing.


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## Youngfun

I don't even try to pronounce th+s, I pronounce months as mons


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## merquiades

Youngfun said:


> I don't even try to pronounce th+s, I pronounce months as mons



You can do it just practice slowly  mon th s or cloth s.   Many people say monts and clots though, but not mons or close


----------



## berndf

merquiades said:


> You can do it just practice slowly  mon th s or cloth s.   Many people say monts and clots though, but not mons or close


I don't think that is correct. All three pronunciation of months exist /mʌnθs/, /mʌns/ and /mʌnts/. This is of course by no means representative, but it is still interesting to note that /mʌns/ is the only pronunciation of _months_ that received a _plus_-vote on FORVO.


----------



## Youngfun

My pronunciation of the "th" is very idyosyncratic.
 Probably my "mons" (/mans/... can't distinguish clearly the vowel /ʌ/) is something that remained after I went to English courses in China. 
Chinese, as Germans and French, pronounce "th" as "s", so when they see ths they just pronounce a simple s. 
But I pronounce clothes as /klouts/, and breathes as /breifs/.

When it comes to the pronunciation of "th", the world seems divided into 3: those who pronounce t/d, those who pronounce s/z and those who pronounce f/v.
I seem to have all three kinds.


----------



## merquiades

Youngfun said:


> My pronunciation of the "th" is very idyosyncratic.
> Probably my "mons" (/mans/... can't distinguish clearly the vowel /ʌ/) is something that remained after I went to English courses in China.
> Chinese, as Germans and French, pronounce "th" as "s", so when they see ths they just pronounce a simple s.
> But I pronounce clothes as /klouts/, and breathes as /breifs/.
> 
> When it comes to the pronunciation of "th", the world seems divided into 3: those who pronounce t/d, those who pronounce s/z and those who pronounce f/v.
> I seem to have all three kinds.



"th" is a hard combination for most non-natives.  I think first one has to become aware of the tongue movement, then get a hand mirror and practice slowly some words while making sure you see what the tongue is doing, and also feeling it, after that slowly get quicker once the position is right.  If I had to choose the one that sounds least bad to me I suppose I would choose t/d.  But it sounds to me like the equivalent of "what do I do if I cannot roll my r in Italian as in arrivederci?", 1) pronounce retroflex r instead, 2) pronounce uvular r fricative or uvular r trill, 3) pronounce d, 4) pronounce y, 5) pronounce l.  
My Achilles heal is Russian yeri (Ы).


----------



## Youngfun

In China I was taught to pronounce the "th" as "s" but with the tongue "pushed out" from the teeth. I don't know how accurate this realization is. 
I do the same thing for the voiced "th", I pronounce a "d" but with the tongue out of the teeth.

That's when I try to pronounce th correctly.
When I talk fast and casually without paying attention to the correct pronunciation, I usually pronounce them "t/d"; when they are word-final I sometimes use "f".
But when they are plural, I have the idiosyncracy mentioned above. 

Even though I've been living in Italy since I was 6, I still have problems with rolling the R.
I don't say L like the classical Chinese people do. 
I usually use a weak R, similar to a flap. Even when there is RR, I use a flap, or maybe a longer flap. Which is acceptable in casual speech in Rome, but not standard.
Strangely enough, when I sing I can roll them better. Maybe I have a particular kind of _erre moscia_?
By the way, I've never heard anyone using d or y! 

For me, another difficult sound in Italian is _gli_ [ʎ], which I usually pronounce [j] or [ʝ], as most people in Rome.

P.S. Ironically in this post I'd just got confused writing "thought" instead of "taught".


----------



## kirahvi

I didn't read the whole thread, but most answers here seem to be for consonants. For me the hardest part of most languages are the vowels. I find consonants much more "tangible" and much easier to control even in fast speech than vowels. 

I can tell apart, for example, [e] and [ɛ], or  and [ʊ] quite well when I hear them, and I can even pronounce them when I concentrate. In fast speech, though, I often mix the height of my vowels horribly. I also seem to have a lot harder time controlling the open - close spectrum than the front - back spectrum.


----------



## olaszinho

> My Achilles heal is Russian yeri (Ы).





Mine too! I generally find consonants easier than vowels to pronounce.  The  Щ  sound in Russian is a bit difficult for me, though


----------



## merquiades

olaszinho said:


> Mine too! I generally find consonants easier than vowels to pronounce.  The  Щ  sound in Russian is a bit difficult for me, though



Me too, but those four consonant combinations like in "встреча́ть" [vstritchát'] really throw me sometimes.  For Щ pronounce "Spanish sheep" quickly making sure you pronounce everything.


----------



## LilianaB

I think the way you transcribed it, Merquiades makes it hard to pronounce even for a native speaker. It is more like [vstryechat'], with a soft final t.


----------



## olaszinho

merquiades said:


> Me too, but those four consonant combinations like in "встреча́ть" [vstritchát'] really throw me sometimes. For Щ pronounce "Spanish sheep" quickly making sure you pronounce everything.



Thank you for your tip.


----------



## merquiades

LilianaB said:


> I think the way you transcribed it, Merquiades makes it hard to pronounce even for a native speaker. It is more like [vstryechat'], with a soft final t.



Dear Liliana.  Yes, I did use my own Russian transcription.  I used "i" to account for vowel reduction of "ye" in atonic syllables, "tch" so as to make clear it's not "sh", and I accented the "á" to show the stressed syllable. That's not marked usually but it's important to me. The apostrophe is for the soft t.


----------



## LilianaB

I am sorry -- it was not meant as criticism, I just though your version would be very hard to pronounce by anyone. In fact, I don't really know why they spell Tchaikovsky with tch? Some people then try to pronounce it with the initial t, which is not there.


----------



## fdb

LilianaB said:


> In fact, I don't really know why they spell Tchaikovsky with tch?.



This is a French spelling, presumably used by the composer himself.


----------



## merquiades

LilianaB said:


> I am sorry -- it was not meant as criticism, I just though your version would be very hard to pronounce by anyone. In fact, I don't really know why they spell Tchaikovsky with tch? Some people then try to pronounce it with the initial t, which is not there.


If "ch" can be pronounced /ʃ/ as in Champagne and Cher then "tch" is /ʧ/ as in Match, Batch, Mitch.  "Tch" is just a way to insist it's pronounced the hard way, /ʧ/ .Without Tch in Tchaikovsky, some people might be tempted to prononouce Shaikovsky with /ʃ/


----------



## Youngfun

And I don't understand why in _How I met Your Mother_ the family name of Robin *Scherbatsky* is pronounced with "tch" /ʧ/ instead of "sh" /ʃ/.


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## LilianaB

merquiades said:


> If "ch" can be pronounced /ʃ/ as in Champagne and Cher then "tch" is /ʧ/ as in Match, Batch, Mitch.  "Tch" is just a way to insist it's pronounced the hard way, /ʧ/ .Without Tch in Tchaikovsky, some people might be tempted to prononouce Shaikovsky with /ʃ/



Yes, that might be, but what about _Churchill_ and _champion_. The _ch_ in Tchaikovsky definitley does not have any _t_ sound to it -- just like _champion_. I agree that it can be transcrined as  _tch _sometimes, but it should be indicated somehow that there is no real _t_ there or a better transcription sign should be invented, because otherwise many people pronounce the initial _t_ which is wrong.

Also we are confusing transliteration with phonetic transcription -- including myself. Tchaikovsky can be spelled in fact any way he wanted, in English. It just has to be phonetically transcribed the right way.


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## LilianaB

Youngfun said:


> And I don't understand why in _How I met Your Mother_ the family name of Robin *Scherbatsky* is pronounced with "tch" /ʧ/ instead of "sh" /ʃ/.



As for Robin Scherbatsky -- it is a fictitious character with a fictitious name which was stylized to sound like a Polish name. What they were aiming at was probably Szczerbacki (missing some teeth -- as a toddler, might) With the spelling they used it really should be  the /ʃ/ sound.


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## merquiades

LilianaB said:


> Yes, that might be, but what about _Churchill_ and _champion_. The _ch_ in Tchaikovsky definitley does not have any _t_ sound to it -- just like _champion_. I agree that it can be transcrined as  _tch _sometimes, but it should be indicated somehow that there is no real _t_ there or a better transcription sign should be invented, because otherwise many people pronounce the initial _t_ which is wrong.
> 
> Also we are confusing transliteration with phonetic transcription -- including myself. Tchaikovsky can be spelled in fact any way he wanted, in English. It just has to be phonetically transcribed the right way.



If you add a "t" to an "sh"/ʃ/ it automatically makes "ch"/ʧ/.  All I'm saying is that doing a transliteration using the "ch" can be problematic because it could be read as /ʧ/ as in champion, /k/ as in choir or /ʃ/ as in champagne.  That leaves some doubt for people, me included.  That's why I always choose "tch" for Tchaikovsky (don't know why he did) and Tchernobyl, otherwise somebody might say Shaikovsky or Shernobyl.  The latter I've even heard before. 

As a side note on "ch", I've heard way too many Americans pronounce the Spanish sausage "chorizo" as /korizo/.  That really bugs me.

I don't know what the best way to trascribe Щ is.

@ Younfun.  American immigrant names can be pronounced practically anyway, as in the original language, as in English, as a mix, or even as something creative.  Some people now believe foreign sounding words should be pronounced always as if it were Spanish.
Another one that breaks my ear when I hear it:   La Paglia pronouced  La Paeg-lee-uh


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## LilianaB

Щ is traditionally transcribed as [ʃtʃ], I think.


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## Youngfun

[ʃtʃ]? 
Oh, then Scherbatsky is Polish, I though it was Russian...
By the way, for me the /ts/ before k is really hard to pronounce, I think in a fast speech I would pronounce it /s/.
Being a Italo-Sino speaker it's hard to pronounce a lot of consonant clusters. 



merquiades said:


> @ Younfun.  American immigrant names can be pronounced practically anyway, as in the original language, as in English, as a mix, or even as something creative.  Some people now believe foreign sounding words should be pronounced always as if it were Spanish.
> Another one that breaks my ear when I hear it:   La Paglia pronouced  La Paeg-lee-uh


Yep, but I still find it illogical to pronounce the letters "sch" as /ʧ/.
A lot of English speakers use "zh" to represent the sound /ʒ/. I wonder if my name _Zhu_ would be pronounced /ʒu/ by Americans.


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## LilianaB

I think _Scherbatsky_ is really a fictitious name but it was supposed to sound like the Polish name _Szczerbacki_ (although _Szczerbinski_ might be more common). They just probably wanted it to be sort of hard to pronounce, and sound slightly exotic. If they really wanted it to sound like _Szczerbacki_, they should have spelled it _Shcherbatsky_ or _Shcherbatski_ (names of Polish origin are more often spelled with _i_ at the end rather than _y_).


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> [ʃtʃ]?


Yes, that's how I learned to pronounce the letter e.g. in the name_ Ники́та Хру*щ*ёв_ (_Nikita Khrushchev_). But here it is transcribed [ɕɕ] and that's how it sounds to me in the sound file there.

EDIT: I listened to a few more samples, e.g. here where I also looked at the spectrogram. No sign of a closure in the middle but double long. [ɕɕ] or [ɕ:] seems better to me.


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## fdb

That is what my Russian teacher told me. But later I realised that it is actually a palatalised [ʃ] and that there is no [t] element involved.


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## LilianaB

Yes, there is definitely no _t_ there of any kind. It is more or less like Shanghai and Chamberlain -- the first sounds together, or shingles and Chamberlain.


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## merquiades

Yes, it sounds like shsh and y pronounced together.  Here's another great word to listen too:  щи (shshyi: ) cabbage soup.  I've heard that щ has evolved in pronunciation from shtch to shshy in the twentieth century.  In Polish it's written Szcz as in the common surname Szczepan'sky (son of Stephan) which is often mis-pronounced in the US as Zai-paen-ski



			
				Youngfun said:
			
		

> Yep, but I still find it illogical to pronounce the letters "sch" as /ʧ/.
> A lot of English speakers use "zh" to represent the sound /ʒ/. I wonder if my name Zhu would be pronounced /ʒu/ by Americans.


The name Zhu is indeed pronounced /ʒu:/ in the US, rhyming with chew.  How is it to be pronounced in Chinese?

Another badly pronounced Italian one:  Stange  pronounced sting-y


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## LilianaB

Hi, Merquiades what do you mean by _shsh_ and _y_ together. That will be _shshy_ -- more like a Chinese sound. The Polish _szcz_ is harder in my opinion than the Russian. _Szcepan_ is most likely not a son os Stefan, but I cannot guarantee it 100%: I think it is a diffrent name, altogether -- _Szczepan_. As to _Zhu_, yes I agree, most people pronounce /zu/, but a Chinese person told me really how to pronounce most of the Chinese names (there aren't that many, after all).


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## berndf

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Merquiades what do you mean by _shsh_ and _y_ together. That will be _shshy_ -- more like a Chinese sound.


No, that would be in sequence. [ɕ] is a sound in between [ʃ] and [ç], or, using the closest English phonemes, between "sh" and and a voiceless "y". And yes, Chinese has this sound too (spelled "x" in Pinyin).


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## LilianaB

Which word would have it in English, if any?


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## berndf

LilianaB said:


> Which word would have it in English, if any?


None. I said, if you want to use English phonemes to describe [ç], it sounds like a sound in between "sh" and a voiceless "y".


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## LilianaB

Do you mean that this sound would represent the Russian Щ ? What about the Polish szcz?


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## merquiades

Liliana, have a look at the International Phonetic Alphabet.  Click on any sound and you get a description of how it's pronounced, what languages it's found in and you have a recording of it to listen to too.  /ç/ is the German sound in "ich".  
You can have a look here too.


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## Youngfun

Maybe, [ɕ] is something close to "I mi*ss-y*ou" pronounced quickly, at least in some dialects.

Actually, I can't distinguish Chinese _x_ /ɕ/ and English _sh_ /ʃ/ (same as Italian _sc_). It seems that I pronounce them the same, they sound the same to me.
Maybe I do pronounce them the same, so in either language I'm pronunouncing wrongly. Or perhaps I cannot perceive the different sounds realized by myself.

As for _Zhu_, it seems that the English pronounciation floats between [ʒu:] and [zu:].
The Standard Chinese pronunciation is /tʂu/ (a retroflex ts), pronounced by us Southerners as simple /tsu/.

In Italy it's usually [dzu] but I'm already accostumed to it.


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## LilianaB

merquiades said:


> Liliana, have a look at the International Phonetic Alphabet.  Click on any sound and you get a description of how it's pronounced, what languages it's found in and you have a recording of it to listen to too.  /ç/ is the German sound in "ich".
> You can have a look here too.


  Oh, no. Phonology was my worst subject in school. I don't think the alphabet is too accurate either. I used to know it quite well, but I always found it quite confusing. It is easier for me to imagine sounds if I compare them to the words I know in various languages, and start from there -- slightly modify them, perhaps.

I know that /ç/ represents the _h_ sound in _Ich_, in some varieties of German. I don't think it has that much to do with the Russian sound, or the Polish _szcz_.


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## merquiades

Youngfun said:


> Maybe, [ɕ] is something close to "I mi*ss-y*ou" pronounced quickly, at least in some dialects.
> 
> Actually, I can't distinguish Chinese _x_ /ɕ/ and English _sh_ /ʃ/ (same as Italian _sc_). It seems that I pronounce them the same, they sound the same to me.
> Maybe I do pronounce them the same, so in either language I'm pronunouncing wrongly. Or perhaps I cannot perceive the different sounds realized by myself.
> 
> As for _Zhu_, it seems that the English pronounciation floats between [ʒu:] and [zu:].
> The Standard Chinese pronunciation is /tʂu/ (a retroflex ts), pronounced by us Southerners as simple /tsu/.
> 
> In Italy it's usually [dzu] but I'm already accostumed to it.



As I said before, they usually say to pronounce "Spanish sheep" quickly to get Щ.

For the name, I've only heard [ʒu:] and unfortunately I pronounce it that way too.   Now I will say /tsu/.  I can't produce retroflex sounds,  ts with the tongue curled backwards.  It seems Chinese has a lot of retroflex similarly sounding consonants. I think I like Southern pronunciation better


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## LilianaB

Щ would be Sherlock Chimes, if anything. How can it be taught as Spanish sheep. It is a sheep at all. It might even be a wolf, if you know what I mean. It is a totally different sound.(maybe  a slighter softer Sherlock).


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## merquiades

LilianaB said:


> Щ would be Sherlock Chimes, if anything. How can it be taught as Spanish sheep. It is a sheep at all. It might even be a wolf, if you know what I mean. It is a totally different sound.(maybe  a slighter softer Sherlock).



Because of long sh with y, and the frontal vowel.

I'm not much of a technical person either. I also agree that the IPA has its limits as can be seen in some threads on WR but it's the best we have here. Spellings like sh, ch, tch have their limits because there are different pronunciations possible for each and especially in regards to English there is a lot of regional difference. It enables us to hear an exact sound and see how it is used in different languages. It's particularly good at pinpointing slight differences between similar sounds in Russian and Polish, Spanish and Italian etc. Also to read a description of where in the mouth it is pronounced, what is the height of the tongue, and the type of sound it is (fricative, affricate, retroflex) etc. For example when Berndf says a sound is in between /ç/ and /ʃ/, it's precise and the best point we've had here.  I can pronounce it much better now.


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> Actually, I can't distinguish Chinese _x_ /ɕ/ and English _sh_ /ʃ/ (same as Italian _sc_).


Applying my German phonemic grid, I can hear the difference clearly. To me it is a sound that cannot decide if it wants to be a [ʃ] or a [ç].


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Applying my German phonemic grid, I can hear the difference clearly. To me it is a sound that cannot decide if it wants to be a [ʃ] or a [ç].



Berndf, do you think people might pronounce /ɕ/ rather than /ç/ in Sarreland dialect?  I say that because I've been in contact with people from this area and it sounded to me like a hesitation between [ʃ] and [ç] but I don't have refined German ears.  Also I compare to other Germans that have a strong /ç/ with more /h/ quality in it say from perhaps Frankfurt.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Berndf, do you think people might pronounce /ɕ/ rather than /ç/ in Sarreland dialect?  I say that because I've been in contact with people from this area and it sounded to me like a hesitation between [ʃ] and [ç] but I don't have refined German ears.  Also I compare to other Germans that have a strong /ç/ with more /h/ quality in it say from perhaps Frankfurt.


In Rhine- and Mosel-Frankish dialects, [ʃ] and [ç] are merged; [ɕ] is a possible relization. Separations are hyper-corrections and speakers often get it the wrong way round, e.g. _Mädchen_ with [ʃ] and _Mensch _with [ç]. In Frankfurt, [ç] doesn't exist; all _ich_-Lauts are pronounced [ʃ].


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> In Rhine- and Mosel-Frankish dialects, [ʃ] and [ç] are merged; [ɕ] is a possible relization. Separations are hyper-corrections and speakers often get it the wrong way round, e.g. _Mädchen_ with [ʃ] and _Mensch _with [ç]. In Frankfurt, [ç] doesn't exist; all _ich_-Lauts are pronounced [ʃ].



Thanks for the information, Berndf.  I'm glad my ears weren't failing me.  I hear it a lot and it all made sense when I realized there were sounds between  [ʃ] and [ç].  
I mistakingly thought that Frankfurt or central Germany was the source for the standard.

All in all, am happy to have learned something today.


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## aprendiendo argento

In Frankfurt, the traditional dialect is a mix of Mitteldeutsch and Oberdeutsch, especially alveolar R's (used by many people born prior to 1970) are Franconian/Bavarian in origin. 
Alveolar R's and ich/ach [ɕ] are common even when people speak Hochdeutsch.



merquiades said:


> Thanks for the information, Berndf.    I'm glad my ears weren't failing me.  I hear it a lot and it all made  sense when I realized there were sounds between  [ʃ] and [ç].
> I mistakingly thought that Frankfurt or central Germany was the source for the standard.
> 
> All in all, am happy to have learned something today.



There is no city devoid of local accent. Even in Hanover many people have a local pronunciation pattern: *Weg *with [ç], and *Wege *with [ɣ], both of which are non-standard.

I don't find the ich-Laut difficult to pronounce, except in the word _München_.  No matter how hard I try, I get either [ɕ] or [x]. (Although with [x] it sounds more authentic / Austro-Bavarian).

---
I can clearly hear the difference between the ''soft'' Croatian/English/French  SH [ ʃ ]  and  the ''dark'' German SCH. In German (as well as Serbian) the pronunciation is closer to [ʂ ] (retroflex) than to [ ʃ ] (palatoalveolar).
This is especially true for words like _stimmt.  _I heard some Germans with virtually impeccable Croatian, but their SH's sounded way off.I guess, it's because the SH is German is pronounced differently,(although there is no[ʂ ] / [ ʃ ] distinction in German, and using English SH for German SCH will not be perceived as foreign, but using German SCH when speaking English will be heard as 'German accent').

Foreigners may hear Central German Kirche as Kirsche, but many people maintain the contrast:  _Kirche _[  ʃ ] ~  _Kirsche _[ ʂ ].


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## berndf

aprendiendo argento said:


> In Frankfurt, the traditional dialect is a mix of Mitteldeutsch and Oberdeutsch, especially alveolar R's (used by many people born prior to 1970) are Franconian/Bavarian in origin.


I am sorry, but Frankfurt dialect is 100% Middle-German. Alveolar "r" is not an Upper German characteristic. In the Frenkfurt region, the alveolar "r" is found in Wetterau (about 25km NE of Frankfurt) but not in Frankfurt dialect. If you go far enough back in history, you will find alveolar "r"s in all dialects because the uvular "r" is a French import and not native in German. The transition from Rhein- to Main-Frankish is somewhere between Aschaffenburg and Würzburg.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> I am sorry, but Frankfurt dialect is 100% Middle-German. Alveolar "r" is not an Upper German characteristic. In the Frenkfurt region, the alveolar "r" is found in Wetterau (about 25km NE of Frankfurt) but not in Frankfurt dialect. If you go far enough back in history, you will find alveolar "r"s in all dialects because the uvular "r" is a French import and not native in German. The transition from Rhein- to Main-Frankish is somewhere between Aschaffenburg and Würzburg.



Really?  A French import?  I'm surprised that the r of one language can affect the pronunciation of all the people of another.  Perhaps a highly gallicized generation at one time or another could have adopted it for pretense, but everybody?  Actually, I had surmised it was the other way around.  People in France (most of them) had a rolled r like in Italian until the 17-18th century (hence the lack of uvular r in New World French until recently) but the first dialects that had it were northern/ eastern where contact with Germans was more likely.   Then when Paris became uvular it spread because of the strong centralism in France.  Even in the 20th century many people in the center and south often had a rolled r.  Danish, contrary to Swedish/Norwegian, has uvular r.  Is that German or French influenced?


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Really?  A French import?  I'm surprised that the r of one language can affect the pronunciation of all the people of another.


Napolioic occupation. Plus in the 18th and 19th century people who could aford it had French-speaking nannies ("Gouveranten") for their children (See e.g. [41] here). The uvular "r" became accaptible in Standard German only in the late 19th century. Siebs (1898) still prescribes the alveolar "r". I don't know about Danish.


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## LilianaB

merquiades said:


> Really?  A French import?  I'm surprised that the r of one language can affect the pronunciation of all the people of another.  Perhaps a highly gallicized generation at one time or another could have adopted it for pretense, but everybody?  Actually, I had surmised it was the other way around.  People in France (most of them) had a rolled r like in Italian until the 17-18th century (hence the lack of uvular r in New World French until recently) but the first dialects that had it were northern/ eastern where contact with Germans was more likely.   Then when Paris became uvular it spread because of the strong centralism in France.  Even in the 20th century many people in the center and south often had a rolled r.  Danish, contrary to Swedish/Norwegian, has uvular r.  Is that German or French influenced?



I definitely think sounds can be imports from another language, and they very often are. Look at the pronunciation of many sounds in Western Poland -- they are highly influenced by the German pronunciation. Or the _on_ ending in certain varieties of Southern AE -- as in _come on_, I am sure it must be the French influence since it is nasalized.


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## Espectro...

LilianaB said:


> Щ is traditionally transcribed as [ʃtʃ], I think.



I'd say it would be correct to write /ʃtʃ/ instead of [ʃtʃ]. From a (morpho)phonological point of view, Щ really is /ʃtʃ/; however, in contemporary Russian it is usually pronounced as [ɕ:]. On the other hand, this is true also for other consonant clusters - for example, /stʃ/ in счастливый is also pronounced as [ɕ:] and, as far as I know, even /ʃtʲ/ (devoiced /ʒdʲ/) in дождь can be pronounced this way.


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## LilianaB

I would not say the Щ starts with an s sound as in /stʃ/. It is definitely a softer ʃ or a sound going into the direction of ç. I also think there are many sounds in between ʃ and ç. Sound is basically a continuum.


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## berndf

Espectro... said:


> I'd say it would be correct to write /ʃtʃ/ instead of [ʃtʃ]. From a (morpho)phonological point of view, Щ really is /ʃtʃ/; however, in contemporary Russian it is usually pronounced as [ɕ:].


Ah! That solves the problem. It is phonologically a cluster but surface realization is a long [ɕ:].


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## LilianaB

Espectro... said:


> I'd say it would be correct to write /ʃtʃ/ instead of [ʃtʃ]. From a (morpho)phonological point of view, Щ really is /ʃtʃ/; however, in contemporary Russian it is usually pronounced as [ɕ:]. On the other hand, this is true also for other consonant clusters - for example, /stʃ/ in счастливый is also pronounced as [ɕ:] and, as far as I know, even /ʃtʲ/ (devoiced /ʒdʲ/) in дождь can be pronounced this way.



It may all depend on the position within the word, because the initial sound in _счастливый_ is definitely not the same as the Щ in _Khrushchev_. The diffrence, however is minor, but it is definitely not the same sound as in _дождь_.


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## Youngfun

berndf said:


> Applying my German phonemic grid, I can hear the difference clearly. To me it is a sound that cannot decide if it wants to be a [ʃ] or a [ç].


Yes, it depends a lot form our native language. Applying my Chinese phonemic grid, to me [ç] is a sound that cannot decide if it wants to be [x] or [ɕ].

At least in my pronunciation, Chinese /ɕ/ would be a simple [ʃj]. So for me English _Shay_ would be [ʃeɪ], but Chinese _xie_ would be [ʃje].
But I pronounce the same English _she_ /ʃiː/ and Chinese _xi_ /ɕi/. (except for the tone)



merquiades said:


> For the name, I've only heard [ʒu:] and unfortunately I pronounce it that way too.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now I will say /tsu/.  I can't produce retroflex sounds,  ts with the  tongue curled backwards.  It seems Chinese has a lot of retroflex  similarly sounding consonants. I think I like Southern pronunciation  better


The difficult thing of Chinese is that distinguishes between unaspirated /ts/ and aspirated /tsʰ/. I feel that the /ts/ in many Western languages is slightly aspirated, and that resembles more the aspirated /tsʰ/ in Chinese. 
Chinese has 4 retroflex consonants: _zh_ /ʈʂ/, _ch_ /ʈʂʰ/, _sh_ /ʂ/, _r_ /ʐ~ɻ/. These are hard sounds, not only for learners, but for a lot of Chinese themselves, if not from Northern China.
/ɻ/ can also occur in syllable coda, it sounds much like the Texan r, or the Brazilian caipira r.


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## LilianaB

I don't know Youngfun -- I think the experience of sound depends mostly on hearing -- the better the hearing the more sounds you can distinguish, or hear slight differences between them. The ability to reproduce certain sounds may depend more on which languages you learned in your childhood, before puberty, when apparently some muscles tighten, which makes it harder for the majority of people to produce certain sounds perfectly, if they learned them later in their lives. There might be exceptions, of course, but this is generally what the studies used to claim.


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## Youngfun

Both Chinese (which has /ɕ/) and Italian (which has /ʃ/) should be languages that I learnt in my childhood. The problem is that in either language there is only one of these sounds, they are never distinct phonemes, so I fail to distinguish them, and have always thought they were the same sound until the "discover" of the IPA.
There are still sounds that I haven't fully mastered yet, like the Italian rolling "r", or the sound "gl" /ʎ/. The latter defect is pretty common among people from Rome.
In Mandarin Chinese I make the same pronunciation mistakes as people from Southern China. 
In my two Chinese dialects, I speak each dialect with a slight accent of the other one .


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> The difficult thing of Chinese is that distinguishes between unaspirated /ts/ and aspirated /tsʰ/. I feel that the /ts/ in many Western languages is slightly aspirated, and that resembles more the aspirated /tsʰ/ in Chinese.


It depends on phonetic context. E.g. German _Zahn_ /tsa:n/ sound to me also closer to _can4_ than to _zan4_. But I hear the differnce in the /a:/ not in the /ts/. If you say _Zahn _in German you let the toungh move from the [s] to the [a] position first and only then voicing starts. Otherwise it sounds more like [tsɛ:n]  or [tsæ:n] than [tsa:n] to a German ear. For a speaker of a language that distinguishes between [ts] and [tsʰ] this pause must be perceived as aspiration. If my theory is correct you should hear an aspiration in _Zahn _but not (or at last less) in _ziehen _(_einen Zahn ziehen_).


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## LilianaB

Youngfun said:


> Both Chinese (which has /ɕ/) and Italian (which has /ʃ/) should be languages that I learnt in my childhood. The problem is that in either language there is only one of these sounds, they are never distinct phonemes, so I fail to distinguish them, and have always thought they were the same sound until the "discover" of the IPA.
> There are still sounds that I haven't fully mastered yet, like the Italian rolling "r", or the sound "gl" /ʎ/. The latter defect is pretty common among people from Rome.


The most important thing is to find your own way of speaking a language that makes you happy and that other speakers of that language can understand. It is better to speak a slightly unusual variety than to sound like a parrot.


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## Youngfun

berndf said:


> It depends on phonetic context. E.g. German _Zahn_ /tsa:n/ sound to me also closer to _can4_ than to _zan4_. But I hear the differnce in the /a:/ not in the /ts/. If you say _Zahn _in German you let the toungh move from the [s] to the [a] position first and only then voicing starts. Otherwise it sounds more like [tsɛ:n]  or [tsæ:n] than [tsa:n] to a German ear. For a speaker of a language that distinguishes between [ts] and [tsʰ] this pause must be perceived as aspiration. If my theory is correct you should hear an aspiration in _Zahn _but not (or at last less) in _ziehen _(_einen Zahn ziehen_).


Honestly I didn't understand the difference in the vowel.  In Mandarin, especially when spoken by Northern Chinese, in "an" the vowel tends to raise becoming [ɐn~æn]; while "ang" is [ɑŋ] with a "broad a". Were you talking about this?
By the way, I also hear an aspiration in *zie*hen. 
You can compare it with the Cantonese 次 /tsʰi/ here. To me it sounds the same as *zie*hen. 
Then compare the above Cantonese word with the unaspirated 子 /tsi/ here.
The Mandarin word 参赞 /tsʰan tsan/ (here) is perfect for this comparation.


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## Encolpius

Right now I am realizing I have problems with *the voiced glottal fricative* (in Czech), I haven't had problems with the Czech ř or ch, but H is a real challenge. I might still use its Hungarian voiceless counterpart.


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