13 Languages with HARDEST Pronunciation
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As a linguist, I’ve come across some languages with incredibly difficult pronunciation. But these ones take the cake. I’ve come up with 13 languages with some of the hardest pronunciation in the world. How do your speaking skills stack up? Try out these words and let me know in the comments how you did!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Difficult pronunciation ahead
0:29 – French Vowels
1:54 – Danish Soft D
3:14 – Japanese
4:34 – Sindhi / Hindi / Toda
6:36 – Arabic
9:31 – Polish
11:13 – English
12:13 – Czech
13:58 – Pirahã
15:44 – Navajo
17:41 – Georgian
19:51 – ¡XÓÕ (Taa)
21:42 – Bonus Sound
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
How many of these impossible languages do you know? 👉🏼 https://youtu.be/2rxA-GBYJb0
@@storylearning Finnish, Polish and Hungarian are certainly not impossible, especially Hungarian has an unfair reputation of being to hard. It is actually one of the easier languages I have studied (and I have studied MANY), and definitely the one I have reached the most fluent level in. It logical, very systematic, very regular and with a near perfect orthography. And no difficult sounds. It wouldn’t even make the top 20 list of the most difficult languages I have studied.
as a slovak i can easily say the czech r with the thing
1. French
2. Danish
3. Japanese
4. Sindhi
5. Arabic
6. Polish
7. Icelandic
8. Czech
9. Wari
10. Navajo
11. Georgian
12. Zulu
13. Maori
@@user-yu8jg4lu2u lil bro is lying
I love your videos. They have tought me many teaching techniches .
Ejectives in Georgian are difficult. But strangely enough, some ejective pronunciation of certain consonants has been creeping its way into many English dialects relatively recently. People are increasingly making their “k” sounds ejective, with quite a distinct click to it, when trying to make emphasis.
I try to learn Georgian and I also noticed this in my English! Although its not my native language, and I dont use the ejectives in German
My father unknowingly makes ejective consonants relatively often in his speech at the end of words, especially at the end of sentences. He makes an ejective k, t, and p (and probably more) pretty often.
As an Arab, the Georgian sounds were a piece of cake for me lol
My mother – a native English speaker – often used to hum the sounds for the phrase “I don’t know” rather than say the actual words.
Every native english speaker does that. You don’t have to just hum it though. You can also just use a sound. AaaaAaaaaa. There are a handful of vowel sounds you can use, and they mean different levels of confusion.
Shouldn’t your mom be already good at saying I don’t know because she’s a native English speaker?
@@Finity2010-ud2rl well if you know a language well you dont have to pronounce things well to understand, and its faster
I do that too. Lol
@@bywonlineno fr
I’ve taught scores of Japanese people to pronounce “6th“ over the years, and there’s no process more guaranteed to produce tears of joy. It can be done folks!
Just curious, which version of 6th? The English one (where the “x” is rendered as a simple “k” instead of “ks”) is quite a bit easier than the other versions where the entire “ksth” string is retained.
I once made a constructed language that featured both /θ/ and /r̞/ in a /θr̞/ cluster. Best thing I’ve ever done 😂
Profile picture checks out
@@katakana1 You know what. That was brilliant haha
I thought i was the only one who made up their own language as a child 😂
@@idylla5972 Haha, me too. I made up my own alphabet so my mom would stop reading my diary.
I’ve lived in the USA for 20 years and I still mix up TH.
I literally don’t use my mother tongue when I’m working, and I still mistaking grammatically.
As a Russian I find in Czech more challenging distinction between long vs. short vowels, rather than Ř.
I don’t say “Sixth” as an American.
What I say sounds like “six”. But I don’t say it the exact same way I pull my tongue further back slightly at the very end when saying sixth than when saying six. This gives it a noticeable shift, almost flutter, at the end. Just the one though. I imagine most people would just assume I was saying six if they didn’t hear it in context.
Are you pronouncing [sıkθ] without any [s]?
The Czech r is how I used to pronounce the trilled r before I learned how to do it properly
It sounds like a J to my ears I don’t understand how it’s an R.
@@Ahmed-pf3lg Think of it as a trilled J! Try it – so hard! 🙂
The Tlingit language uses the “ɬ” sound like Navajo. Actually, this sounds is quite common in the native American languages of the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska. Tlingit has an ejective form of ɬ, as well as combinations of it. For example dl, tl, tl’. The language has no L or R sound that is in nearly all languages. It also has a near full set of ejectives, including the back part of the mouth. It is likely to contain sounds in no other language.
@@glaakee Yes, it actually not uncommon. Many languages from the Caucasus have it as well, and certain dialects of Norwegian (my mom uses it!☺️)
Tlingit is a super cool language, I have studied a bit. It has, as you say, a LOT of difficult sounds.
This was a fun video! As a kid, I may or may not have been the bored kid in the classroom that would make all kinds of noises with my mouth…and never got caught🤣I thoroughly enjoyed attempting to make all those sounds!
The intervocalic T and D in American English in words like better and header is quite a rare sound and difficult to articulate for non-native speakers. I can even tell in movies that it’s a British actor playing an American character when he or she sometimes let slip a not so quite genuine rendition of those sounds.
Yes, it’s by far the hardest sound.
From an Arab.
In fact, it’s the only sound I kind of struggle with.
You’re talking about the voiced dental/alveolar tap, right? I thought it was a pretty common sound in a lot of languages. I know Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and some other languages use it.
@@katelinakeene7578 It’s not exactly the same. The tap is ever more slight and with more aspiration in the American version. But yeah, I get what you mean, it does sound quite similar to the r in some variants of Spanish as well as Japanese, Korean and most dialects of Turkish.
i feel proud to be able to pronounce famous czech “r” (i’m polish btw)
Me too, I am Bulgarian though.
The “th” sound in English gets easier to pronounce (or more comfortable) once you realize: native speakers move and rest their tongues differently than us non native speakers. Yes, your foreign accent is what makes the “th” sound so challenging. Work on softening it (for me it started with bingewatching the first 4 seasons of Game of Thrones and repeating everything the characters said the way they said it, you will start getting the hang of the British accent, tongue and mouth movement etc.)
3:54 Ewe is considered on of the most difficult languages in Ghana. It doesn’t just do that weird thing to the ‘f’ sound, it does it to ‘d’, ‘v’ and ‘p’ as well. It gives the language a characteristic sound as if the speaker’s mouth is filled with food.
“Ř” is really crazy… so Poles got rid of it a couple of centuries ago and replaced it with an ordinary Ż (but they continue writing it as “rz”).
By the way, Ř in Czech often becomes voiceless, typically after another voiceless consonant.
It sounds like a J to me. I don’t get it.
@@Ahmed-pf3lg it’s a lot harder than J, with tongue vibration
That’s why in Polish there is one sound that can be spelled as “ż” or as “rz”, depending on word’s etymology. A real struggle for Polish kids at school.
Olly, I just returned, and this time around I learned via Wikipedia that Nexalk is also known by the name Bella Coola, and is on Canada’s Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
A few weeks ago, I saw this word on a video here, and was so intrigued, I called the tribal office, and learned the following: Ka:’yu:’K’t’h’/Che:K’tles7et’h’ =
kah-you-kuh-CHECK-ul-seth, which is also on Vancouver Island.
For whatever reason “R” seems to be the hardest sound in every language. Except if you’re British then it barely exists.
But a common speech defect in English accents is to pronounce the ‘r’ as a ‘w’.
‘R’ certainly exists in Scottish accents.
I’ve studied Spanish, Arabic, Esperanto, Chinese, and Portuguese, and the only one i’ve ever struggled with at all in terms of pronunciation, or ever received any negative feedback from native speakers in, is Arabic. Pronunciation has always been my best skill in language, and even in languages i haven’t studied i’ve been able to impress native speakers by my imitation skill. But Arabic has been a totally different, humbling experience..
As an Arab, I can confidently say that it’s almost impossible to sound like a native if you are not native. Our language is just too hard phonetically.
And we Arabs can imitate most sounds of other languages easily, even if it doesn’t exist in our language. Our throats and tongues are already well trained. For example in this video the only sound I genuinely couldn’t imitate was the Danish D.
@@Ahmed-pf3lgsorry to say that but even Arabic speakers can struggle with the pronunciation of other languages. I am always skeptical of general statements like these.
Why are you learning so many languages?
@@margedtrumper9325 he said: the MOST sounds. Someday my Arabic friend said the same.
@@annettg1202 I don’t have this impeession. Twll me an Arabic native speaker who sounds like a native in all languages as he claims. I have come across languages with far more difficult sounds anyway