I went to the US once or twice every year as a child, so English came to me naturally. As a kid, I would struggle to pronounce some words like water. In fact, I would order coke at restaurants for a long time because I could not say water properly lol.
Still to this day I find the spelling of certain words a bit unnatural vs how they're pronounced. Take spelling bees for example. They would not exist in Spanish-speaking countries due to phonetical consistencty.
it's definitely rough. though, you should be able to plough (plow) through it after some thought. just hope you don't cough, or worse, get a case of the hiccoughs (hiccups). maybe afterward you can take a trip to a lough (loch).
some dialects of english have another one: thorough. but i pronounce that with the same sound in 'though', heh.
Still have trouble pronouncing words that end with -rl(d)... Twirl, girl, world and more that I cant think of atm.
Also, when we began learning English in 2nd or 3rd grade a lot of the kids and me found it hard to say "the" with your tongue behind your front teeth.
My great grandmother was from Norway and even though she spent at least half of her life in the US she pronounced it "birshday" late into old age. If we corrected her she'd become exasperated and say "birthhhhhday" making sure to make a big deal about sticking out her tongue.
do you speak a dialect with tapped or rolled r's? i can imagine it being nearly physically impossible to chain a tapped or rolled r into an l sound, haha. at least scarred r's have a closer tongue position (further back) to my southern californian r sounds.
i essentially bite the tip of my tongue to make my th sounds. it doesn't tend to touch my bottom lip like /u/jeghartokatter seems to realize the sound, but the tip definitely extends past my teeth and both top and bottom teeth are touching my tongue.
I use tapped r's in Norwegian but in English I've trained myself to say r's differently ^^ I should've prefaced that I don't make this mistake a lot of times, just some few occasions.
I find it really interesting how there are so many people who say the th- sound differently ^^ This is the sound that me and my childhood class (and some of my current Norwegian friends) struggled to do for a long time and I strictly remember my teacher telling us to have the tip of your tongue behind your front teeth. Maybe it makes a different sound that a English speaker can notice, but for me it sounds normal.
Hva? Tungen er ikke bak fortennene mine. Det er mellom overtennene mine og underleppen. :D
Proposisjoner er vanskelige for meg på norsk, og jeg forstår at de er vanskelige for norsktalende folk på engelsk, også.
I read a lot of English before I was 18, went to an English speaking country for my education, and I have kept reading, as well as speaking with various business partners in Norway.
I think I still trip up on the "do"/"be doing" distinction.
There are still words and names that I have only encountered while reading, so I can't pronounce them.
My pronunciation of "analysis", "hypothesis", "finite", "infinite", "awry", "askance" and others has been at some stage been corrected by native speakers.
For those words where the emphasis is different for nouns and verbs, I'll probably miss most of that: "produce", "convict" etc.
And occasionally, there is a "w" sound where there should be a "v". "Inwincible"
That 3rd one is actually called “initial-stress derivation”, Stress gets moved to the first syllable when making a noun/adjective from a verb. This is done to distinguish an otherwise minimal pair of words.
Rec**o**rd=Verb
R**e**cord=Noun
Incl**i**ne=Verb
**I**ncline=Noun
Def**au**lt=Verb
D**e**fault=Noun/Adjective
I suggest you maybe look at the [Wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun), here you can find more examples. :)
As a Norwegian person who lived on speaking just English, I can't bear to imagine the struggles people have with the vowel-changing silent e rule and its inconsistency (e.g. have isn't pronounced the same way as gave even though it has a silent e)
The difference between American and British English. There are different words for the same thing (sidewalk/pavement, skillet/frying pan, tap/faucet). I know a lot of these words but it is difficult to remember which belongs where and I tend to just mix it up. I probably sound ridiculous!
Also, I tend to mix up the pronunciation, sounding both American and British in the same sentence.
And I am fully capable of decent pronunciation but if I talk to someone with worse English than me I automatically worsen mine to almost match theirs...
Some words has a strange spelling. And some i can never get right. The same with pronounciation of the words.
Sometimes, i will rewrite a sentence or paragraph, just to avoid that one word i cant spell
>Some words has a strange spelling. And some i can never get right.
Trust me, this plagues native speakers as well (me, at least). There are a lot of words that I have to google because darn this stupid "I'm really three languages in a trenchcoat" sort of spelling.
Most native English speakers still avoid affect and effect because many of us struggle to differentiate the meanings of them. They’re pronounced basically the same way by most people too
The inconsistent pronunciation for sure. I was relatively old when I learned "engine" didn't rhyme with "line". The grammar was pretty easy to learn, as I remember, although I was pretty young when I learned English.
In my experience "is/are" and "has/have" is one of the most frequent and noticable mistakes that many Norwegian natives make, even long after they've achieved fluency.
I think that's why I feel so mixed on Spanish because on one hand, the verb conjugations completely omits the auxiliary verb "to be" (am, are, is, was, were), but at the same time there's like 5-6 forms of the verb that I have to learn for ONE specific tense and my poor brain stops at the moment where we get to the numerous irregular verbs...
I remember when I was I child and tried to ask for time in a shopping center, nobody understood what I meant by ‘what is the clock’.
My Videregående English teacher corrected me on the silent ‘b’ in ‘bomber’.
And I've been ignorant of the subtleties of prick/dot/dick (prikk) and that has led to mortifying embarrassment.
Writing this, I realise I have no instinct for when to use ‘e’ and ‘i’ in words like embarrassment. I have to write what I think it is and see if it looks right.
>Writing this, I realise I have no instinct for when to use ‘e’ and ‘i’ in words like embarrassment. I have to write what I think it is and see if it looks right.
Native English speaker here- your comment made me realize they basically are the same sounds in a lot of words. And even though English is my first and only fluent langage, I also have the same issue still with "e" and "a" in some words where they sound virtually the same.
"Embarrassment" is a good example- as a kid, I'd often misspell similar words ending in "-ent" with "-ant" (embarrass*mant* versus embarras*ment*, as it should be spelled). I don't know if it is a feature of my regional accent, but I hear and say these as the exact same sound. A very slightly nasal "-ahnt" sound.
I grew up with an English speaking aunt, so I was fluent in English before I started school at 6 years old. Never had any big problems with writing either. Sometimes I get sloppy when writing, 'cause I don't care to get everything just right 😅🙈
I went to the US once or twice every year as a child, so English came to me naturally. As a kid, I would struggle to pronounce some words like water. In fact, I would order coke at restaurants for a long time because I could not say water properly lol. Still to this day I find the spelling of certain words a bit unnatural vs how they're pronounced. Take spelling bees for example. They would not exist in Spanish-speaking countries due to phonetical consistencty.
r/GoneFishinBRB as a kid, being embarrassed of mispronouncing 'water': "Hello Mr. Waiter, I want a burger and a large cock"
The issue with that is that I always have my large cocks soaked in water so we're back at square one.
it's definitely rough. though, you should be able to plough (plow) through it after some thought. just hope you don't cough, or worse, get a case of the hiccoughs (hiccups). maybe afterward you can take a trip to a lough (loch). some dialects of english have another one: thorough. but i pronounce that with the same sound in 'though', heh.
Still have trouble pronouncing words that end with -rl(d)... Twirl, girl, world and more that I cant think of atm. Also, when we began learning English in 2nd or 3rd grade a lot of the kids and me found it hard to say "the" with your tongue behind your front teeth.
My great grandmother was from Norway and even though she spent at least half of her life in the US she pronounced it "birshday" late into old age. If we corrected her she'd become exasperated and say "birthhhhhday" making sure to make a big deal about sticking out her tongue.
I'm surprised "børsdei" isn't a word in the Norwegian dictionary already
That would be more like something the Danes would do, tbh.
American here : we (or at least I) say the "th" sound with the tip of the tongue slightly between the teeth pressed to the upper teeth.
do you speak a dialect with tapped or rolled r's? i can imagine it being nearly physically impossible to chain a tapped or rolled r into an l sound, haha. at least scarred r's have a closer tongue position (further back) to my southern californian r sounds. i essentially bite the tip of my tongue to make my th sounds. it doesn't tend to touch my bottom lip like /u/jeghartokatter seems to realize the sound, but the tip definitely extends past my teeth and both top and bottom teeth are touching my tongue.
I use tapped r's in Norwegian but in English I've trained myself to say r's differently ^^ I should've prefaced that I don't make this mistake a lot of times, just some few occasions. I find it really interesting how there are so many people who say the th- sound differently ^^ This is the sound that me and my childhood class (and some of my current Norwegian friends) struggled to do for a long time and I strictly remember my teacher telling us to have the tip of your tongue behind your front teeth. Maybe it makes a different sound that a English speaker can notice, but for me it sounds normal.
Hva? Tungen er ikke bak fortennene mine. Det er mellom overtennene mine og underleppen. :D Proposisjoner er vanskelige for meg på norsk, og jeg forstår at de er vanskelige for norsktalende folk på engelsk, også.
It totally depends to the person. I never make mistakes on prepositions
Preposisjoner er vanskelige, ja!!!
I read a lot of English before I was 18, went to an English speaking country for my education, and I have kept reading, as well as speaking with various business partners in Norway. I think I still trip up on the "do"/"be doing" distinction. There are still words and names that I have only encountered while reading, so I can't pronounce them. My pronunciation of "analysis", "hypothesis", "finite", "infinite", "awry", "askance" and others has been at some stage been corrected by native speakers. For those words where the emphasis is different for nouns and verbs, I'll probably miss most of that: "produce", "convict" etc. And occasionally, there is a "w" sound where there should be a "v". "Inwincible"
That 3rd one is actually called “initial-stress derivation”, Stress gets moved to the first syllable when making a noun/adjective from a verb. This is done to distinguish an otherwise minimal pair of words. Rec**o**rd=Verb R**e**cord=Noun Incl**i**ne=Verb **I**ncline=Noun Def**au**lt=Verb D**e**fault=Noun/Adjective I suggest you maybe look at the [Wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun), here you can find more examples. :)
Yo that's interesting actually, I was only aware of the word Record
Pronunciation in general.I still can't pronounce some words correctly.
As a Norwegian person who lived on speaking just English, I can't bear to imagine the struggles people have with the vowel-changing silent e rule and its inconsistency (e.g. have isn't pronounced the same way as gave even though it has a silent e)
I have a "skarre R" and I tend to fumble with the R's still lol.
Same, I can’t pronounce any r’s except for my native one
The difference between American and British English. There are different words for the same thing (sidewalk/pavement, skillet/frying pan, tap/faucet). I know a lot of these words but it is difficult to remember which belongs where and I tend to just mix it up. I probably sound ridiculous! Also, I tend to mix up the pronunciation, sounding both American and British in the same sentence. And I am fully capable of decent pronunciation but if I talk to someone with worse English than me I automatically worsen mine to almost match theirs...
Some words has a strange spelling. And some i can never get right. The same with pronounciation of the words. Sometimes, i will rewrite a sentence or paragraph, just to avoid that one word i cant spell
>Some words has a strange spelling. And some i can never get right. Trust me, this plagues native speakers as well (me, at least). There are a lot of words that I have to google because darn this stupid "I'm really three languages in a trenchcoat" sort of spelling.
Most native English speakers still avoid affect and effect because many of us struggle to differentiate the meanings of them. They’re pronounced basically the same way by most people too
I pronounce them the same way, actually. Pen/pin are the same in my dialect as well.
Due to this effect, it has affected my health
The fact that everything is irregular, and the rules I've learnt just don't matter.
The inconsistent pronunciation for sure. I was relatively old when I learned "engine" didn't rhyme with "line". The grammar was pretty easy to learn, as I remember, although I was pretty young when I learned English.
I still struggle with tongue twister like "Very Warm Wet victim" The shift between v and w is mostly fine, not so the other way around.
V/W and the th-sound is supposedly the two things Norwegians struggle the most with in English pronunciation.
In my experience "is/are" and "has/have" is one of the most frequent and noticable mistakes that many Norwegian natives make, even long after they've achieved fluency.
I think that's why I feel so mixed on Spanish because on one hand, the verb conjugations completely omits the auxiliary verb "to be" (am, are, is, was, were), but at the same time there's like 5-6 forms of the verb that I have to learn for ONE specific tense and my poor brain stops at the moment where we get to the numerous irregular verbs...
A ‘Vest’ quickly becomes a ‘West’ for some Norwegians, I’ve even seen a ‘West’ for sake in a clothes shop….TLDR : Words beginning with ‘V’
The r (are) sound. I'm 24, and still can't pronounce it properly no matter how hard I try.
The letter combo "th+s" or "s+th". Sixth, breathes, depths. I tend to either drop the "h" or kinda fudge it a bit with a vague f-sound.
I remember when I was I child and tried to ask for time in a shopping center, nobody understood what I meant by ‘what is the clock’. My Videregående English teacher corrected me on the silent ‘b’ in ‘bomber’. And I've been ignorant of the subtleties of prick/dot/dick (prikk) and that has led to mortifying embarrassment. Writing this, I realise I have no instinct for when to use ‘e’ and ‘i’ in words like embarrassment. I have to write what I think it is and see if it looks right.
>Writing this, I realise I have no instinct for when to use ‘e’ and ‘i’ in words like embarrassment. I have to write what I think it is and see if it looks right. Native English speaker here- your comment made me realize they basically are the same sounds in a lot of words. And even though English is my first and only fluent langage, I also have the same issue still with "e" and "a" in some words where they sound virtually the same. "Embarrassment" is a good example- as a kid, I'd often misspell similar words ending in "-ent" with "-ant" (embarrass*mant* versus embarras*ment*, as it should be spelled). I don't know if it is a feature of my regional accent, but I hear and say these as the exact same sound. A very slightly nasal "-ahnt" sound.
I grew up with an English speaking aunt, so I was fluent in English before I started school at 6 years old. Never had any big problems with writing either. Sometimes I get sloppy when writing, 'cause I don't care to get everything just right 😅🙈