Squirrel
Pronouncing the name ‘squirrel’ for those cute, bushy-tailed critters is pretty challenging for foreign language speakers. The tricky part, for German speakers in particular, is the ‘rel’ ending. In German, the ‘rl’ typically comes at the end of a syllable like the name Karl, but in English the ‘rel’ forms a syllable of its own. When a German speaker tries to say the two-syllable word ‘squirrel,’ it comes out as the monosyllabic ‘skwörl.’ Dissatisfied with this result, the German speaker tries to produce a real ‘R,’ of the sort you get in (Rock ‘n) Roll, in the end cluster, “wreaking havoc,” Carlos Gussenhoven, a linguist in the Netherlands, told Live Science.
Read on to find out how to learn a new language as an adult.
Ignominious
If someone is despicable or dishonourable, you may call them ignominious, that is, if you can even pronounce it properly. Despite the word’s short length, its five syllables filled with many ‘i’s’ and ‘o’s’ is enough to get anyone tongue-tied.
Successful
Many English language learners are quite unsuccessful reading and pronouncing the word ‘successful’ for the very first time. It may be because the double ‘c’ and double ‘s’ trips people up. At first glance, the word looks like it should be pronounced ‘succ-ess-ful’ but that is incorrect because the second ‘c’ is pronounced like an ‘s,’ which can confuse anyone learning how to read or speak English. Unfortunately, the English language is full of word quirks that continue to boggle our minds.
Do you know which is the only letter in the English language that is never silent? Find out here.
