I know most Germans struggle with the word "squirrel".
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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Grew up in the US (the Deep South)β¦ moved to England, have been here for like a bajillion years and unfortunately still sound American π
But for me it is crisps. Why do we have to say this word when it is so awkward?!?
You are not alone on this one.English is not my first language so I have to make a conscious effort with words that have STS sounds like: Ghosts, forests, dentists and crisps. Lol.
Glad to know Iβm not alone, I donβt really understand why humanity has made things so hard for humanity at timesβ¦ surely this canβt also be linked to greed like so many other issues?!? π π
Paw and Poor sounds like the same word in my dialect, so I have to put in effort to switch to Received Pronunciation when I need to differentiate
Australian here and with my bigan arse accent I struggle to pronounce the word "regularly"
I break it up to much when I read it into reg-u-lar-ly
If i say it is just roll through the last have and get regurrrly
In my tarheel accent, a consonant Y often gets sanded to an uh sound. Especially when speaking quickly it's not uncommon to hear a Carolinian say "REG-uh-lurr" rather than "REG-yew-lurr".
Is your accent the one where "oh, no!" sounds like "ohr, nohr!"
+1 for "th". I'm from germany and it's like impossible to pronounce for me.
"Phthalates"
That's not an English word, that's a space catholic word.
I have a disdain for technical latin, Stop telling me I have hypernatremia; high blood salt is exactly as detailed and like 54 syllables shorter.
I have trouble with "sixths".
and "twelvths"
I have pretty much no split between four and thaw. Canβt even hear the difference when someone else does it.
February. I'm happy I don't have to say it often.
Is there anywhere on earth that pronounces the R? FEB-you-air-EE.
In India, it's usually feb-ru-(v)a-ree. Our languages write words as they are pronounced, and we're too lazy to make an exception for English.
Yeah English phonics is a garbage fire. Just look at that last sentence.
UK native speaker. I tend to pronounce it "feb-Ι-ree"
Stumbled on this tongue twister in the wild. It's freaking impossible.
Soldier shoulder surgery.
My children's optometrist is a place called "Tropical Optical". I can't do it.
I'm from the American Southeast. I speak with a tarheel drawl. To listen to me speak, you'd think the word "rural" has four Rs in it. Rrrrl.
To be fair, r is a secret vowel.
We'll eventually give up and thesaurus it.
Rrrrl. Rrrrl. RRRRL. Out inna woods.
Months. The S after the TH as in THink vs THe, is difficult.
Most native speakers do not really pronounce the "ths". Typically you hear "mons".
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English speaker - corollary.
It means to have the property of being a Toyota Corolla
Everything is difficult (I'm from Spain).
Czech has this special Ε sound, which is somewhere between a rolling R and the S in vision (/ΛvΙͺΚΙn/). I'm learning Czech as a fifth language, so while I can pronounce it standalone or at the start of a word it takes all my focus to manage mid-word.
Native English speaker here. Aside from catching crap for regional accent differences, I didn't have any noticeable, repeating problems until COVID. I can't, for the life of me, properly pronounce comorbidity. Even when I really concentrate on it, it tends to come out as comorbibity. It really makes me sound stupid as hell.
Comorbibbity babbity boo.
"Assthedick"
Now you'll never forget.
As a native english speaker, obsequious.
Non-native but spent a lot of my life living in English-speaking contexts. I know how to pronounce it, but my tongue seems to like tripping up over "hospital".
"probably" is awkward for me. I used to drop the b's and pronounce it "pro'ly", but now I make the effort to use "likely" instead
βProllyβ is how I pronounce it in speech, especially in the middle of a sentence.
I feel like one of the hardest things to master for non-native speakers, especially those who speak Romance languages, is the pronunciation of consonants that occur in the middle of phrases. Itβs not a hard and fast rule, and depends on the speaker, but those said middle consonants are often very understated, especially in fast speech. I can always tell a Spanish or French native speaker because they would pronounce it: pro-Ba-BLEE, with the clear, distinct, staccato-like intonation of their mother tongues.
You could always claim you learned English from Irish English speakers: they commonly substitute dental frictives with the plosives, so /th/ with /t/ or /d/.
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My sister can't say sea minerals without it sounding like semen roll.
The ones with "ch", the laboratory coworkers laugh when I pronounce "chemistry"
How are you trying to pronounce it? At least in my accent, the βchβ is just pronounced like a βkββ¦
KEM-ist-tree
In spanish is like "chocolate"
mistry
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