Pronounciation of Hearth (who has been saying it wrong?)

[Tonkyhonk]

I bet no one can do "ы" at the first try (word example).

actually im not sure if im doing it correctly between [i] and [u], with self-teaching and some tips gotten from mongolians, but i dont remember having a problem with that particular sound itself alone. does it have a minimal pair to compare with?
the problem with russian for me that i found was the complex combinations of all the consonants and vowels, especially ж and ш in combination.
(the very first word i tried was the polite greeting "Здравствуйте"... took me long to get used to it and made me feel like i could try any others after this.)

@borka,
thanks for trying. i cant find any written in IPA for those two words either, yet.

@amanda,
aye, it should take lots of efforts and enthusiasm from the both sides, the therapist and the treated, i can imagine therapies not working well when your bro didnt feel it necessary. age matters for hearing, but not sure if learning articulation matters much with the age, as many do learn foreign languages at later age.

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as for the hardest phoneme to pronounce that i can challenge others, there are these ones called ingressives.
http://ingressivespeech.info/
ive learned two of them for mongolian feedback words, both velaric (for yes) and glottal (for no), and im pretty good at them after a year of enthusiastic practicing and observing the natives lol too bad there is no sample file for the ones i can manage to pronounce.
i guess scandinavians have no problems with these, but i havent heard these uttered with j/y and m by scandinavians in person yet, my current ambition now is to hear them in real and try to mimic them!

[NOOBY93]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Sl-Ljubljana.ogg

That's easy (or maybe that's because of my slavic mouth). I bet no one can do "ы" at the first try (word example).

ljubljana 2ez, Ы is managable (i think, obviously i cant judge myself cuz im not russian) but not that ez
however i think the sound "th" from english is tougher than both...

[Potjeh]

Is there actually a word that has ž and š next to each other? I can't think of any examples in Croatian, and I think it'd get changed by one of them palatalizations or whatever, which I think are almost universal in Slavic languages.

And Nooby, why don't you put your mouth where your, uhm, mouth is, and post audio clips of you pronouncing those

[Tonkyhonk]

Is there actually a word that has ž and š next to each other?

if it was a question to me, i should have said "ж or ш" (assuming ž and š are the equivalents of ж and ш). not those both in one word, but either sound with others.

[Potjeh]

Ah, that. Yeah, I don't see what's difficult about those, plenty of languages have them. At least they're *everywhere* in French and Portuguese. And š is very common in English.

[NOOBY93]

Is there actually a word that has ž and š next to each other? I can't think of any examples in Croatian, and I think it'd get changed by one of them palatalizations or whatever, which I think are almost universal in Slavic languages.

And Nooby, why don't you put your mouth where your, uhm, mouth is, and post audio clips of you pronouncing those

im from croatia where letter "Lj" is in the alphabet, so I can pronounce Ljubljana just fine and a russian told me I pronounce ы pretty good

[Potjeh]

Whoops, for some reason I thought you're British

[Tonkyhonk]

Ah, that. Yeah, I don't see what's difficult about those, plenty of languages have them. At least they're *everywhere* in French and Portuguese. And š is very common in English.

english has [ʃ] and [ʒ] and they are different from slavic [ʂ] and [ʐ], though they are indeed very close and you may be using them as diaphoneme or complementary sounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postalveolar_consonant
sound file comparison
[ʃ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voice ... bilant.ogg
[ʂ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voice ... bilant.ogg
[ʒ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voice ... bilant.ogg
[ʐ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voice ... bilant.ogg

its likely a matter of practicing but the point here is that slavics (and portuguese too) have distinctive sibilant fricatives (or alveolo-palatal fricatives), [ɕ] and [ʑ], which are much closer (or almost the same) to the sounds in my language that intervene my articulation. they may or may not have minimal pairs to make semantic contrasts, but they are at least, afaik, distinguishable or noticeable enough for europeans and not so easy for me :/
simple "please" in russian is already a nightmare for most japanese unless we forget about pronunciations. (with ж and л and у...)
i can beat you slavs with th, but you all beat me with retroflex.

other than that, the hardest sound in english for me is "he", "him" and "hit". [h] with vowel /i/. i need to be super concentrated to pronounce those properly, but no problem with "hat" or "hey" or "how". im sure most of you have no problem saying "he", it just shows mother tongue interference is a real big deal.

[loftar]

Since we seem to be in a pissing match on who has the most speshul language, I can just as well challenge you to pronounce the consonant that only Swedish has, and to get all of our 18 vowel sounds right. ^^

[MagicManICT]

never heard that joke, and dont remember one in kung-fu movies ive watched as a kid, but yes, i think i know what youre talking about as chinese "r" in pinyin is far from english "r", its more like "j" in russian ж - which i can never manage to pronounce correctly so far. (and Wade-Giles/cambridge was known overseas as a way of romanizing chinese sound before pinyin and that version used "j" for this chinese "r" instead for a long time, most likely so in 70s.)

The joke in the US is about an old Chinese man who does not understand his eye doctor when the doctor tells the older man that he has cataracts. Instead, the old man tells the doctor that "I don't have Cadirrac, I drive Rincoln." (Cadillac, Lincoln being the words here.) Thought about posting it earlier, decided not to, but since you asked...

Obviously the stereotype here goes beyond national boundaries, and that joke likely dates to at least the 40s or 50s. US movies used to be horrible about using stereotypes (not like they've gotten THAT much better).

Since we seem to be in a pissing match on who has the most speshul language, I can just as well challenge you to pronounce the consonant that only Swedish has, and to get all of our 18 vowel sounds right. ^^

I don't see you speaking Swahili. Damn gutturals are impossible for anyone not native from what I understand.