Sounds That You Can/Can't Pronounce Easily

[Ċeaddawīc]

What sounds can you pronounce very easily that you're proud of, and what sounds can't you produce that make you feel stupid?

I, for one, can pronounce ejectives, the uvular and bilabial trill (voiced and unvoiced), and implosives (voiced and unvoiced) easily, but I can't pronounce, for the life of me, a uvular voiced fricative or an alveolar trill, and I'm still not sure if I'm able to pronounce a pure [o] right (dang native English!).

What about y'all?

[Matt]

I can pronounce a trilled r and the Russian Ы (/1/, if I remember my X-SAMPA) just fine in isolation but making them properly in connected speech is still tricky.

I can make good clicks, ejectives, and implosives. One of my linguistics professors can't make many non-English sounds (or maybe is just uncomfortable making them in front of large class), so she had me demonstrate a bunch of sounds earlier this semester. That was pretty neat.

[Cockroach]

I can't hear the difference between [ɺ] and [ɾ]

[cybrxkhan]

I can't pronounce /θ ð/, period. I can pronounce many other things, but not those two. I usually realize them as either /d/, /f/, or /v/. e.g.:

<that> becomes <dat>
<three> becomes <free>
and
<father> becomes <faver>

Nobody's been able to teach me to do the English <th> correctly, period. Although I wonder why I usually realize it as /d/, /f/, or /v/, since as an Asian I would think that I would normally pronounce it as /s/.

[Colonel Cathcart]

I can do an alveolar trill but not a uvular trill. It's weird because my sister can do a uvular trill but not an alveolar trill.

[Ziz]

I seem to have a problem with rapidly producing [ʕ] and other pharyngealized consonants, which is a pain. I'm getting better at it, though. Somehow I don't have any trouble at all with [ħ].

[Xephyr]

CAN: I finally learned how to do clicks late last year when I was toying around with Xhosa. There are a few hitches still, though...I still am not sure whether I can distinguish nc/nx/nq and gc/gx/gq in articulation, and I know for sure I wouldn't be able to distinguish them aurally.

CAN'T: I still am not confident that I can pronounce pharyngeals, even after all this time. I've on occasion (including atm) studied languages that have pharyngeal consonants, and there's some sort of sound that I make just to put something there, but I don't think it's any kind of epiglottal or pharyngeal.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

I've never bothered to learn the way-back-in-the-throat sounds, I can't comfortably and confidently make a uvular trill and I'm not sure how to do coarticulated kp and gb, but other than that I think I can do most consonants. The back unrounded vowels are tricky.

[Xonen]

I've never bothered to learn the way-back-in-the-throat sounds

Me neither; I can pronounce [χ] and [ħ] quite confidently, but other than those, uvulars are tricky to get right at least in fast speech and anything further back than that I can't be arsed to even try (well, with the rather obvious exception of glottals, of course). I've been considering studying Somali at some point, though, so perhaps I'll eventually have to put some effort into this.

Nobody's been able to teach me to do the English <th> correctly, period.

Just put the tip of your tongue between your teeth and blow? That should give you a reasonable approximation, at least.

[Noriega]

The back unrounded vowels are tricky.

Indeed, I have no problem distinguishing lower back vowels when listening to English, but pronouncing them isolated is hard.

After something like 20 years of learning English, I still have problems fitting [θ ð] into running speech. With these becomes "wit deez" etc.

[finlay]

Can't do the difference between epiglottals and pharyngeals, if there even is a difference. Can't do an epiglottal plosive. Not very good at the bilabial trill. Stumped by the labiodental flap. Not sure about advanced/retracted tongue root.

Pretty damn good at everything else though; the only other caveat is that I'm not sure I can insert implosives into a word, and I'm not entirely sure about click accompaniments. I can certainly make them, though.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

After something like 20 years of learning English, I still have problems fitting [θ ð] into running speech. With these becomes "wit deez" etc.

I have that problem with [v w], which is pretty embarrassing.

[Simmalti]

I can't hear the difference between [ɺ] and [ɾ]

Same! And I don't know whether my [x] and [χ] are correct.

I have no problem with [ħ] though, since it's a native phoneme for me. I can also do some highly fricativized trills. Can't do a bilabial one though.

[Rui]

I'm getting quite good at producing the clicks found in Xhosa (so only the dental, alveolar, and lateral, I believe)...and even putting them in words! <Q> (alveolar) is the hardest of them, but I'm getting quite good at actually pronouncing <Xhosa>, and the dental <c> is quite easy...I met a girl yesterday named Ncedisa which I've learned how to pronounce. But like I said, still struggling with <q>, but getting better after practicing with the word umleqwa (some kind of chicken)

Ejectives and implosives are hard for me, just because I have no idea what they are supposed to sound like. Or maybe I just can't distinguish between them and regular plosives. Also most central vowels, because they all sound like /@/ or /6/ to me, except for /}/ which is indistinguishable from /y/ to me.

[Xephyr]

I'm getting quite good at producing the clicks found in Xhosa (so only the dental, alveolar, and lateral, I believe)...and even putting them in words! <Q> (alveolar) is the hardest of them, but I'm getting quite good at actually pronouncing <Xhosa>, and the dental <c> is quite easy...I met a girl yesterday named Ncedisa which I've learned how to pronounce. But like I said, still struggling with <q>, but getting better after practicing with the word umleqwa (some kind of chicken)

Is it really alveolar though? I have seen it called that almost universally, but elsewhere I think I've seen the equivalent sound in Zulu described as "palato-alveolar" which I suspect is more accurate. I can rather easily make a pure-alveolar click sound that doesn't much resemble Xhosa <q>. If I give it some palatal action, though, then it sounds spot on... it gives it the popping sound you hear, but with a crisper release than a pure-palatal click.

Also you wouldn't happen to have any pointers on the difference between nq and ngq, would you?

EDIT: Man this is making me want to get back into the language.

[Risla]

I can pronounce almost anything in isolation aside from epiglottal trills, which I am seemingly incapable of doing but people ask me if I'm okay if I try. I am also unsure if I'm doing pharyngeals right, but if I am, [ħ] is way harder to pronounce than [ʕ]. The labiodental flap is hard but I can do it.

[Aurora Rossa]

Can pronounce: Most of the consonants on the IPA chart, ejectives, implosives, and most clicks.

Can't pronounce: Epiglottal consonants, many of the more subtle vowels (those apart from the cardinal ones), voiced aspirated stops. [More accurately, I can pronounce them the latter two, just not very well]

[äreo]

I can do pretty much any vowel.
I can pronounce the five major clicks (bilabial, dental, alveolar, lateral, palatal) and usually distinqush them, but the oral/nasal distinction is barely there for me.
I can do uvulars, but it's hard to distinguish them from pharyngeals.
Ejectives are easy, so are implosives.
Creaky voice, breathy voice, voiced aspirates, and tones are difficult.

[Viktor77]

I'm getting better at /y/ but I still can't pronounce /2/ to save my life, and don't even get me started on my failed attempts to roll my /r/s. I also have trouble getting a perfect /B/ and /W/ and my /x/s are always closer to /X/s. I also can't pronounce /D/ which bothers me in Spanish. Lastly, I have trouble with long vowels and patalisation versus V+/j/ which gets me in Latvian.

[Xephyr]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

[Yng]

I STILL can't distinguish between [ae] and [a] (pretend the first one is a ligature, I no longer have my IPA keyboard and I can't be bothered looking up the X-SAMPA). Nor can I work out how to pronounce initial plosives WITHOUT aspiration.

I CAN pronounce most sounds found in Europe, including the alveolar trill and tap.

[Viktor77]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

[Rui]

Is it really alveolar though? I have seen it called that almost universally, but elsewhere I think I've seen the equivalent sound in Zulu described as "palato-alveolar" which I suspect is more accurate. I can rather easily make a pure-alveolar click sound that doesn't much resemble Xhosa <q>. If I give it some palatal action, though, then it sounds spot on... it gives it the popping sound you hear, but with a crisper release than a pure-palatal click.

Also you wouldn't happen to have any pointers on the difference between nq and ngq, would you?

I'm not entirely sure if it's alveolar vs. palato-alveolar, I just know that it takes place on the roof of your mouth...I never formally learned what each click was phonetically, just an approximate pronunciation guide. I unfortunately can't help with the nq vs. ngq because I'm not actually learning Xhosa, just learning words here and there. It doesn't help that whenever a Xhosa-speaker teaches me a word and I attempt it, they say that my pronunciation is good, even when I can tell it wasn't

I wish I was learning it, though. I wanted to sign up for Beginner Xhosa this semester, but there was a time conflict (but I heard the class isn't very good....)

[Rui]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

[T@], [TIs], [Tiz], [T{t], [TEn], [ToUz], [Ter\]...???

[Risla]

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

Oh, well, I must speak Weird English or something.