Any words that you simply CANNOT speak.

[Somebloke]

Xkcd? :9

Most of anything that ends with "..ged", such as: "fledged" or "encouraged". All those "dzj'D!" or "tsh'T!" sudden stops really twists my poor tounge.

With "alleged", at least I can voice that last "e".

 

[Mestraal]

'Th' sound doesn't come easily to me, at all. Comes out as 'f', much to the confusion of many. Should I try to overthink it and say, for example, 'three' it comes out as 'ter-ree'.

 

[Crimson Butterfly]

I can't recall any words that I've never managed to get my tongue around but my manager seems to have an inability to pronounce the letter 'H' at the begging of a word. She can't even spell these words correctly.

Example:

Mr Hedge becomes Mr Edge.

Or

"Our depot as one." instead of "..has one."

In case anyone is wondering the woman is Nottingham born and bread. I've never noticed this trait in anyone else from these parts. I know some slang drops this letter but this seems like she actually can't make the letter sound rather than just lazy linguistics.

Also, coming from Scotland my home land and nationality are brought up on occassion. According to her, even after numerous corrections, I am a "Scotch" person and I come from Scochland. She's quite capable of saying the name 'Scott' however.

I'm baffled.

 

[SeeIn2D]

A word that I simply can't speak? How about the full name of the protein Titin? It's 189,819 CHARACTERS LONG. THAT'S RIGHT, 189,819 LETTERS! I dare anyone to try and recite the full name. As the video shows, even with it being said at a rapid pace, the video is STILL over eight minutes long.


/thread forever

Thats a verbal formula, not technically an actual word.

Anyways OT, there aren't any words that I really can't say ever, but there are a few that are the most common for me to get tripped up on. 'Shetland sheepdog', I have two of these but sometimes when people ask what kinds of dogs they are I stumble on the words. 'Personification' is another I get tripped on more often than most words but still I usually don't have trouble with it unless I'm having "one of those days".

 

[JochemDude]

Bro, it always comes out like 'buwrow'

 

[lordlillen]

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

yeeaaaaah, fucking impossible.

 

[TyrantGanado]

I've noticed that I've recently began pronouncing 'hour' as 'uurr' since moving to Dundee.

On a related note, my mum can't say the word 'burglar' without getting tongue tied.

 

[shrekfan246]

The flapped intervocalic t and d are systematic dialectal phonological changes. It isn't a "lack of enunciation" and pronouncing them as stops isn't "proper enunciation". These are sociological myths. If you were pronouncing them "fully", you would actually be mispronouncing the words given your dialect.

And the Deus Ex thing is just normal syllabification. Moving the s to the onset of the second syllable is a natural tendency in every human language.

Our horrible language education (by which I mean roughly everyone's - I don't know of anywhere that they do a good job) continues to convince people that they're wrong with absolutely no linguistic justification.

Assuming you're being serious, then I feel the need to explicitly state that apart from the actual pronunciation of words in my dialect, I was mostly being facetious. I don't believe there is such a thing as "proper" pronunciation, because there are far too many different dialects and accents. Even in America alone. If I went down to Louisiana, I could guarantee that it would only take about an hour, maybe two, of talking to locals before I would run into a word being used a way I had never heard before.

However, I never really pass up the opportunity to learn something new, in this case the "systematic dialectal phonological change" part, so I thank you for that.

 

[Daffy F]

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The longest place name in the UK.

Fuck it. I can't pronounce that either.

 

[Pinkamena]

"Michael Bay makes good movies".

Joking aside, there's no words I cannot pronounce.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

The flapped intervocalic t and d are systematic dialectal phonological changes. It isn't a "lack of enunciation" and pronouncing them as stops isn't "proper enunciation". These are sociological myths. If you were pronouncing them "fully", you would actually be mispronouncing the words given your dialect.

And the Deus Ex thing is just normal syllabification. Moving the s to the onset of the second syllable is a natural tendency in every human language.

Our horrible language education (by which I mean roughly everyone's - I don't know of anywhere that they do a good job) continues to convince people that they're wrong with absolutely no linguistic justification.

Assuming you're being serious, then I feel the need to explicitly state that apart from the actual pronunciation of words in my dialect, I was mostly being facetious. I don't believe there is such a thing as "proper" pronunciation, because there are far too many different dialects and accents. Even in America alone. If I went down to Louisiana, I could guarantee that it would only take about an hour, maybe two, of talking to locals before I would run into a word being used a way I had never heard before.

However, I never really pass up the opportunity to learn something new, in this case the "systematic dialectal phonological change" part, so I thank you for that.

Medium seriousness. The overwhelming majority of people do not share your enlightened view of what is "proper".

And I sort of grimaced after writing "systematic dialectal phonological change", but after a moment's hesitation it sounded too ridiculous not to post.