Are YOU saying Worcestershire right? The trickiest words to pronounce in the English language revealed (and they include 'squirrel' and 'specific')

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 04/06/2015 - 19:34

Annabel Fenwick Elliott for MailOnline

The hardest word in the English language for foreigners to the pronounce is 'Worcestershire', according to a recent poll.

On a recent Reddit thread, user JustATreeNut, asked people from around the world to submit English words they struggled with most.

Top of the list is the name of an English county (and a great British condiment), which although pronounced 'wuss-ter-sheer' seems to confound most non-English speakers when they attempt it.

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In the top ten, which was put together by Mamamia, apparently easy words such as 'specific' and squirrel took second and third place. 

And certain words which appear on the list, including 'brewery' and 'edited', seem rather straightforward to an average Brit.

Others, including 'phenomenon and 'February' are notorious tongue twisters even for native English speakers.

The last two words to make the top ten were Derby, which is (confusingly for foreigners) pronounced 'darby', and 'heir'.

Of course, we've all had our embarrassing slips when attempting to pronounce unfamiliar words.

None more mortifying, perhaps, than John Travolta's linguistic misstep at the 2014 Oscars, where he pronounced Frozen star Idina Menzel's name as: 'Adele Dazeem', for the entire world to see.

And let's not forget Benedict Cumberbatch, the Oscar-nominated British thespian who famously recorded an entire voiceover for a 2009 BBC nature documentary pronouncing the word 'penguin' as 'peng-wing'.

Speaking later on BBC America's The Graham Norton Show, the 38-year-old blamed his producers for failing to correct him at any point during the recording.

 

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