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DJDave
What is the hardest sound or letter to say in your native language?
Nov 25, 2010 8:54 PM
Answers · 13
1
It changes with whoever is learning the language, but my students are having massive troubles with "th" and "ng", because those sounds don't exist in their language.
I still think R is difficult because we English speakers simply have not agreed on how it should be pronounced.
November 25, 2010
1
One is "th" in "thin" (unvoiced dental fricative) and also as in "the"and "this" (voiced dental fricative) as a non English speaker finds "th" hard to pronounce.
November 25, 2010
RR as in perro
November 26, 2010
Both lithuanian and russian can't find any dificult sounds. :)
November 25, 2010
I think the most difficult sound in Russian is rolled [r]. Commonly, it's the last sound that little children learn to pronounce.
Sometimes there're funny cases with the letter "Я" because it's also a personal pronoun "I". One of them is described in L.Panteleev's story about a little girl learning the ABC:
(father): And this is the letter "ya". (≈ And this is the letter "I")
(little girl): The letter "ty"? (≈ The letter "you"?)
(father): No, not "ya" but the letter "ya". (≈ No, not "I" but the letter "I")
You can meet another confusing situation when teaching someone a foreign language with Roman alphabet. A letter "Я" is like a mirrored letter "R".
November 26, 2010
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DJDave
Language Skills
English, Spanish
Learning Language
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