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What language is difficult to pronounce?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
26 messages over 4 pages: 1 24  Next >>
reineke
Senior Member
United States
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Studies: German

 
 Message 17 of 26
11 February 2017 at 6:23pm | IP Logged 
I am surprised this board is still alive.
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cathrynm
Senior Member
United States
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 Message 18 of 26
23 June 2018 at 10:22pm | IP Logged 
It's alive! And the impossible to prounounce language, far as I'm concerned, is Chinese. I asked Chinese people how to pronunce their names, and then I try. They say no, I try, they say no again.
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Monox D. I-Fly
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 Message 19 of 26
26 June 2018 at 1:34am | IP Logged 
Have you guys tried Arabic?
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cathrynm
Senior Member
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 Message 20 of 26
14 October 2018 at 3:09am | IP Logged 
No, I haven't tried Arabic, but yeah, maybe it rivals Chinese for pronunciation. I did look into reading just the alphabet so I could say people's names, and some sounds were quite difficult.



lingasms
Triglot
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 Message 21 of 26
18 December 2018 at 6:02pm | IP Logged 
Interestingly for me, I really find it difficult to pronounce German, even though I have no
problem with other tricky sounds in Germanic languages like English, Dutch, and Danish (except
for the soft d, ofc).



Monox D. I-Fly
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Indonesia
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762 posts - 664 votes 
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 Message 22 of 26
19 December 2018 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
As someone who started to learn Arabic in grade 4, I still find it difficult to pronounce.



cathrynm
Senior Member
United States
junglevision.co
Joined 5906 days ago

910 posts - 1232 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Finnish

 
 Message 23 of 26
03 March 2019 at 5:35am | IP Logged 
Arabic is fascinating to me,as I'm pretty well-connected to people in Gaza on Facebook due to following the conflict there. Wish I had time for it, but I'm just too busy with my own languages.



mrwarper
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Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 24 of 26
12 May 2019 at 8:44pm | IP Logged 
Since this board is still alive (I should know! ;)...

I don't think that simply stating a language is more or less difficult to pronounce for me cuts it -- not to mention that I may be delusional about the whole issue. I will also skip stating the obvious by saying that practice should make it easier (d'oh!)

What I will say is that the language features being (un)known to you must certainly go a long way, and I will give you two examples:

-Norwegian. One of the last times I met our very own Cristina I tried to mimic how she pronounces her name. Judging from her reaction, I apparently failed big time. Of course, I know zilch about Norwegian so I didn't know what I should have been paying attention to, so playing it by ear didn't exactly sound like music, probably.

-Bulgarian. Even though my Russian is still stuck nowhere useful, I have an extensive background in studying its phonetics, which (so I have been told) are similar enough to Bulgarian. So, I was discussing with a Bulgarian friend how important it is to teach some operational principles of phonology and phonetics to language students when she demanded a practical demonstration. She uttered some simple stuff in Bulgarian, and to her astonishment I repeated it with flawless pronunciation (her words, not mine). She made sure to throw a few non-Spanish sounds to try and trip me up, but it didn't work. Why? I was ready for the features in her speech, whereas she certainly wasn't ready for a better-than-mediocre rendition from me.

Would it work differently repeating that a few times around? Who knows... ;)
Best regards, everyone!



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