Just wait till you try “Lieutenant” in Britain or Canada.

Worcestershire

Kernel

It was spelled with an R in the past, and they tried to change it to an L (because that's how it "properly" should be according to its origins), but only the spelling stuck, probably due to everyone being illiterate anyway.

English as my first language and I can’t get that one right either.

No one can.

It helps to break it up.

worce - ster - shire

"Worcestershire sauce is the worst."

"Thousand island is worster."

"'Worster'? Sure."

odd, I never had an issue with WarChester sauce.

I know a kid who can't say these either but I didn't put together what it was before.

Of course, we have two th sounds just to make things more fun

But dutch people area native English speakers

You must say this out loud as an affirmation.

Pilots say tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

I never knew there was a difference, whoops

The delightful thing is that it works in reverse also: ask a native English speaker to pronounce "Eichhörnchen."

Or a French person.

Ends up as "skwiwwl" for me every time...

Two people scored the same after the first five. They were the... sixths.

It's a near miss of biting my tongue every time.

Also to add, a lot of native speaking adults also struggle with the th sounding words, generally due to local accents.

It's a common one my brother! The F sound in free is made where your top teeth are on your bottom lips, and tongue is retracted. The th sound is when your tongue is resting on or just behind your top teeth, almost like you're smiling.

Oh god yes

German?

Rural juror.

Everyone has trouble with that one. There's even a joke about it in Finding Nemo. I don't imagine most English-speakers can spell it offhand.

I was listening to a best-selling author's recent audiobook, and the professional voice actress messed this one up. So you're in good company. Really, who can we blame but the Greeks?

I'm having a whole cognitive dissonance moment because I could've sworn it was "anenome". I even studied this in college and have an ecology degree. Likely over the last twenty years I convinced myself that the common incorrect pronunciation is correct, but I immediately looked it up and then tried to rationalize that it was some sort of mandala effect. The simplest answer is that it's confabulation on my part, and I'm wrong.

"sp" cluster can be hard. So can "sk" at the end of a word. Hence why you can get "axe" instead of "ask"

As a math teacher, I hate "sixth" or "sixths."

Same goes for ' pocketed it'

And my first language is Dutch, but like to speak English

For most new native English speakers, it's Spaghetti (pisketty) and Elephant (efalent). For my son it was Caterpillar (calapitter). I struggled with pronouncing Uncomfortable. I wanted to say every syllable.

ME TOO omg

I think many, many native speakers would struggle with those too so if you're at that level you're doing really well. Congrats!

It's the names Korra and Larry put together.

*façade

I've never heard anyone of any native language pronounce it fack-aid? The English speakers I hear always say fuh-saad. Or are you saying that fack-aid is how you pronounce it and you struggle with fuh-saad?

Some English speakers pronounce that the french way

Niche is another weird one bc in some contexts it is pronouched the french way in others, "nitch".

The squirrel's ecological "nitch".

Finding your niche in the job market....