In terms of pronunciation, English is weird. Especially when your mother tongue is a language where (almost) everything is pronounced the way it’s written. Don’t get me wrong here, I love many things about English, but pronunciation isn’t one of them. There are words that no matter how many times I practise saying, they just won’t come out right. And no, words such as floccinaucinihilipilification,antidisestablishmentarianism or honorificabilitudinitatibus are not included.
#1 Rollerblading I love the activity and hate the word. I try to avoid using the most difficult part, that is roller, by saying skatingbut that unfortunately causes a lot of confusion.
#2 Miscellaneous Not only I seem not to be able to remember this word, I also had to check the spelling in a dictionary. It’s a very useful word but its form simply prevents me from using it.
#3 Caucasian I need to ask a native speaker how to pronounce this word because I just can’t believe this is correct: [kɔːˈkeɪzɪən]
#4 Deterioration No matter how many times I will hear or write this word down, I’ll always forget at least one syllable. It’s sad to see the deterioration of my language learning skills.
#5 Refrigerator Thank God for the word fridge. I’d probably die of hunger sooner than saying refrigerator five times in a row.
#6 Otolaryngology In Czech it’s possible to use an acronym (ORL) instead. Not that I need an otolaryngologist so often, but I was really glad that I found out that English has an acronym for this as well: ENT. Yay!
#7 Tremendous Great word, but not with my pronunciation. The “ou” at the end is too confusing and too long to be pronounced with a “schwa“!
#8 Third Three is fine. Third is a little bit too much.
#9 Remuneration After finding out that renumeration is just a misspelling and not a word, I learned how to write it properly. However, I still can’t get rid of the incorrect pronunciation.
#10 Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship comes from French and I learned French! Unfortunately, even this didn’t help.
So, this is my top 10 list. You’ll probably never hear me say those words aloud, but if you do, please don’t laugh. Oh, and the world laughter would be my #11!
And what are your “favorite” English words in terms of pronunciation?
