Let's Learn English! Topic: Hard to Pronounce Words! 🐿️🩺☕ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello, and welcome to this English lesson

about words that are hard to pronounce.

There are some words in the English

language that are difficult to pronounce.

You look at the spelling of the word and

it's, even with the letters in front of you,

it's hard to know how to say the word.

There are some words on this list that are hard for

me to pronounce, even though I'm a native English speaker.

And there's a few that I actually pronounce

wrong, and I'll talk about that as well.

There's about two or three words on this list

that have alternate pronunciations depending on maybe what you're

talking about, like a city name or how you

were raised and taught to say the word wrong.

So I will make sure I highlight that as well.

But once again, welcome to this English

lesson on hard to pronounce words.

I think you'll enjoy it.

Stethoscope. Stethoscope.

I'm going to try and say each word

twice, and then I'll try to give you

some hints on how to pronounce it slowly.

So a stethoscope.

Stethoscope.

If you break the word into three

parts, stethoscope is how it's pronounced.

This is the thing that the doctor

uses to listen to your heart.

So the doctor will put the two pieces in

their ear and then they will listen to your

chest or they'll listen on your back.

They might also use it to listen to your lungs.

When a doctor uses a stethoscope, they're

able to check your heart rate.

They're able to hear if you have fluid in your lungs.

Maybe you have a bit of pneumonia.

So they'll use a stethoscope in order to check that.

By the way, I was watching the show jeopardy.

The other day, and the final answer was stethoscope.

And I didn't actually know how to spell it because

if you listen stethoscope, it almost sounds like it has

the letter a in it, but it doesn't.

It's stethoscope, but it is an o.

So a stethoscope, something that a doctor uses to

check your heart and to check your lungs. Squirrel.

This is on the list of English words that are

the most difficult to pronounce for people learning English.

A squirrel is a small

rodent creature type creature that.

There's a lot of them here.

I surprised I didn't see a squirrel this morning.

So if I say it slowly, squirrel.

Squirrel.

If I say it quickly, it's

almost harder to say squirrel. Squirrel.

It's like we crunch the word together.

But yes, squirrels run around in the fall,

and they collect acorns and other nuts from

trees, and they hide them everywhere so that

in the winter they have something to eat.

We have a lot of squirrels on our farm.

They live in the trees behind the house.

And funny story, we once had a family of squirrels

living in the roof of our house, and it took

me about a month to get them out of there.

Eventually, we figured out how they were getting in.

A squirrel had chewed a hole, and we waited until

all of the squirrels left in the morning to go

get their food, and then we blocked up all the

holes, and they weren't able to come back.

But squirrel.

Another hard to say English word, rural.

So listen how I say it. Rural.

I almost don't say the two syllables.

By the way, rural refers to out in the countryside.

You can live in the city, which is considered

an urban area, or you can live in the

country, which is considered a rural area.

So let me say it slowly.

Rural.

Rural.

Rural sounds weird when I say

it a whole bunch of times.

I live in a rural area.

I live out in the country.

I get my mail delivered in a vehicle.

There's a mail truck that comes and brings the mail.

I don't have a mailman deliver

my mail or a postal worker.

So I live in a rural location.

When I go for a walk, I see

fields, I see animals, I see trees.

Because I live out in the country,

I live in a rural location.

6th.

So there are a bunch of people in line here.

Let me count them.

Yeah, I did pick a picture with six people.

I'm assuming the girl on the other end is first

in line and then 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th.

So six is a number.

When you add a th, you're referring

to what comes after the fifth person.

So, 6th. 6th.

This is a challenge for some

English learners because of the.

At the end, it's a challenge for me.

The more I think about pronouncing 6th, the harder

it is for me to actually pronounce it properly.

I have to kind of say it quickly in a sentence.

I stood in line to buy Taylor Swift concert tickets.

I was 6th in line.

I was 6th in line.

So it's a very difficult thing to do.

The x followed by a th.

But if you are 6th in line, that means

there are five people in front of you, comfortable.

So this word, when you know how to pronounce

it, is fairly easy, but the letters give you

a different sense of how you might say it

when I sit on the couch behind me.

This one here, it's very comfortable.

Comfortable.

So the m and f slide together.

Very comfortable.

And you don't over pronounce every syllable.

It's comfortable.

This sweater is very comfortable.

I enjoy wearing this.

It's nice and warm and comfortable.

The couch is very comfortable.

My blue van, the seats are uncomfortable, but

my red van has very comfortable seats.

So there are a number of

sentences using the word comfortable.

Bouquet.

Now, this is another one where these

are Jen's bouquets, by the way.

It's actually fairly easy to say once

you know how to say it.

But when you look at the word, it can be

very hard to figure out how to pronounce it.

But it's basically boke.

Bouquet. Bouquet.

So Jen likes to grow flowers, and then Jen

likes to make bouquets out of the flowers.

So when you have a bouquet, it's a bunch of different

flowers put together, usually held with an elastic and put in

some nice paper or even in a nice vase or vase.

Two pronunciations there.

But yes, Jen likes to make bouquets.

Jen likes to sell bouquets.

I'm using the plural a lot, so let me use the singular.

It's nice to give a bouquet to someone on a

special occasion, on an anniversary, or on Valentine's Day.

It's nice to buy someone a

bouquet, a bouquet of flowers.

Very nice gift.

Subtle.

So this has a silent b.

If you notice, you don't pronounce the b.

Subtle refers to when something is just kind of there.

Yesterday I ate some food from a restaurant and the

rice had a really subtle, I think there was just

a small amount of chili powder in it.

So it had a subtle amount of chili flavor.

Like just a small, tiny amount.

So subtle means just a little bit.

So you can hear subtle. Subtle.

There's no b happening here.

And again, I'm not going

to pronounce these words wrong.

As an example, I will always say them correctly, but

just when you look at the word and you see

the b, you do not pronounce the b.

And we refer to that as a silent letter.

It's a silent b.

Wednesday.

So this is a weird one because the order of the

d and the n get flipped when you say it.

I say Wednesday.

Wednesday.

It's W-E-D-N but I pronounce it like it's W-E-N-D.

Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Want me to say that even faster?

And you can practice that.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I almost forgot the order.

Wednesday, so again, this is how we say

it and not how we spell it.

So Wednesday.

This past Wednesday.

What did I do on Wednesday?

Can't remember.

Oh, on Wednesday.

I made a members only video, Wednesdays with Bob.

By the way, if you want to hear

the pronunciation of Wednesday, become a member and

go listen to one of those videos.

Welcome to Wednesdays with Bob.

Remember, this isn't an official English. Never mind.

I'm not going to say the whole thing.

Okay, so this is an interesting one.

If you don't know how to

pronounce this, you might say Toronto.

I'm going to go to Toronto.

But we actually say Toronto. Toronto. Toronto.

So you notice that the second t does have a d sound.

Toronto.

If you're from Ontario, you might even say Toronto.

I'm going to Toronto.

Jen and I went to Toronto the

other day to watch the blue Jays.

I'm going to take the go train and I'm going to go to.

We really native Ontario.

English speakers really mush it down.

Ontario is the province I'm in,

but you should say Toronto.

Toronto.

Some people, if you're from Britain, I hear people from

Britain often say, I'm going to go to Toronto. Toronto.

And they make the tea.

But in Ontario, we often say Toronto or Toronto.

I'm going to go to Toronto.

I said it too many times.

It's starting to sound funny now.

I think Eugene is here.

Eugene is from Atobaco and that's close to Toronto.

So he lives close to that is.

Oh, by the way, Toronto is a big city. Close to me.

It's one of the biggest cities in Canada.

I don't know if it's the biggest.

Montreal is big.

Toronto is big.

So that was a more proper pronunciation there. Toronto.

It probably all sounds the same to some of you, though.

Espresso, a very rich coffee drink. Espresso.

When you go to an espresso bar, you can

order an espresso, comes in a little cup.

You can also get a shot of espresso in something else.

Maybe you're having milk with a shot

of espresso and some sugar in it.

Lots of different and fun drinks that can be

made with coffee, and espresso is one of them.

I should have put the word cappuccino on here as well.

That's a little difficult to pronounce if

you just see the word as well.

So this word actually came up in a lesson

and the first pronunciation I gave was wrong.

This is mischievous.

So this kid has a slingshot and he looks

a little bit mischievous, but a lot of English

speakers will say mischievous, which is totally wrong, but

it's actually how I sometimes say it.

So even a native English speaker can

learn to pronounce certain words wrong.

Okay, so this kid, he has a

little bit of a mischievous look.

I might say he looks mischievous, and that would

be wrong, but it would still come out later.

Today I'm going to be talking with my sister.

If I had to use this word, there's

a chance I would pronounce it wrong.

But the correct pronunciation, mischievous.

And that's probably a great picture.

A kid with a slingshot.

I had a slingshot when I was a kid.

It was a lot of fun.

I liked using it to do target practice and

to shoot cans off of the picnic table.

Sherbet.

So here's another funny one.

So by the way, sherbet, the French is sorbet.

If you see that even on there,

it says sorbet, arconcil, rainbow, sherbet.

My entire life as a kid, I called this sherbert.

I added an r before the t, and I wasn't the only one.

My parents called this sherbert.

They would say, do you want ice cream or sherbert?

But the proper pronunciation is sherbet.

Again, I'm only giving you incorrect

pronunciations if they are somewhat common.

Okay, so sherbet.

Some people love ice cream, but some people like

something more fruity and with no milk or cream

in it, so they'll eat sherbet instead.

We often just call it sorbet.

By the way, we use the french

word in Canada, probably because our country

is bilingual, but sherbet, translucent.

Found this nice picture.

I hope the person who owns it doesn't

get mad at me for using it.

But when you have something that is opaque, light can get

through a little bit, but you can't see through it.

When it's translucent, it's like looking

through fog a little bit.

So this middle window is translucent.

You can sort of see through it, but

not as clear as if it was transparent.

So translucent.

I added to the list because it was on a

list of words that said they were hard to pronounce.

So translucent.

My light right here has a nice translucent cover on it

so that it's not as bright as it would be. Q.

So it's just like the letter Q.

You get in a queue, you line up in a queue.

We don't use this word in Canada a lot.

We usually just say line.

There was a huge lineup, but you could

say, oh, there was a huge queue.

Just 1 second here, let me check something.

I'm hitting all the wrong keys again.

I'm just checking if there's a different.

Yeah, I was just checking if there was a

different pronunciation in British English, but in american or

north American English we would say q.

It sounds like in Britain they would say

q, which is basically the same thing.

I can't do a good british accent, but a q is a line.

Why are there so many letters in this word?

I don't know.

It doesn't need that many letters.

It could certainly be much shorter.

But a queue is a line, usually a line that you stand

and wait in in order to buy something or do something.

When you go to an amusement park, you might stand

in a queue before you get on a ride.

A choir is a group of people who get together and

learn songs and then perform them and sing them for people.

The reason this is hard to pronounce is because it starts

with ch, and ch doesn't often make a qu sound.

Choir. Choir.

And so you end up wanting to use either ch

or k, but it's not either of those sounds.

It's choir quiet.

So this should be spelled with a q, probably. Anyways.

A choir is an enjoyable thing to

do, an enjoyable thing to be in.

If you like to sing, you can

be in different sections in a choir.

You might be in the soprano section or the

bass section or the tenors, but a choir.

There were a lot of choirs singing

last week for Christmas at various places.

Drought.

So here's another one of those words,

like thought and throughout and thorough, where

we use the O-U-G-H in the spelling.

A drought is a time when it

doesn't rain for several weeks on end.

So for a very long time, it

doesn't rain and things begin to die.

We sometimes have small droughts in Canada.

Not usually major, but enough to

make the crops not do well.

But in some countries they will have a major drought.

And a drought is just bad for

people, bad for plants, bad for animals.

Things don't grow if it doesn't rain.

So you certainly need rain in order for things to grow.

So once again, drought.

If you think about the word out, like, he's going

to go out and it's just with a drought. Drought.

Scissors.

This one is another example of a word

that has more letters than it needs.

It doesn't need the letter c as the second letter.

And so people sometimes accidentally

try to pronounce the c.

But these are scissors.

When you need to cut some paper, you use some scissors

or a pair of scissors has anyone seen the scissors?

That's a common question in our house.

We have a pair of scissors.

In our kitchen, in the same

wooden block where we have knives.

We have a nice pair of scissors, and it

goes missing every once in a while because scissors

are super handy when you need to cut some

paper, when you need to cut something open.

It's nice to use a pair of

scissors in order to do that.

Silhouette, probably from a french word.

It looks very french, doesn't it?

A silhouette is the outline of a person

that you can see when there's a light

coming towards them and you're behind them.

So you can see the silhouette of this tree,

because the sun is shining on the tree and

you're standing back here, so you see its silhouette.

This is not a shadow, okay?

This is not shade specifically, but this is when you

see, you can see the silhouette of a man, you

can see the silhouette of a park bench, and you

can see the silhouette of a tree.

A silhouette has no color.

It's generally very dark gray or black.

I was going to try and recreate

that, but I don't think I can.

But here you can see, because the

sun is shining in the distance.

You can see the silhouette of a man with his

cane, but you can't tell what color his clothing is.

And you can see the silhouette of a

bench and the silhouette of a tree.

Unique.

Again, a word that isn't actually hard to pronounce.

Unique. Unique.

This yellow ball is unique.

All of the other balls are blue,

but this yellow ball is unique.

It's one of a kind.

So mostly, I would say this word is

hard to know how to pronounce if you've

never said it before because of its spelling.

So here's an interesting one.

In North America, we say clothes.

The things you wear.

I'm wearing clothes today. Good thing.

It's important to wear clothes. It's proper.

And in a civilized world, people wear clothes.

In North America and in Canada, we say

this the same as to close a door.

Okay, I am wearing clothes this morning.

I'm going to close the door when I get in the van.

I like to close the door when I get up in the morning.

I put my clothes on.

If you are in Britain, though, if you are learning a

british pronunciation, you do hit the th a little bit.

Clothes, I don't never do.

It's always clothes.

I have to wash my clothes.

I have to do the laundry.

I have to hang up my clothes after I wash them.

The th sound is not pronounced when I say this word.

Need.

Sometimes we have silent letters.

So when you make bread, you need to need the dough.

I just used two versions of need there, by the way.

Ne d you need to need the dough.

Should I put that in the chat so you can see it?

You need to knead the dough.

And then dough itself is maybe

a little hard to pronounce.

Sorry, I got distracted for a sec here.

When we make bread, though, we make it in a

bread machine, so the machine needs the dough for us.

But it's an important step in the bread making process.

You need to make sure that you let the dough

rise and then knead the dough once or twice, depending

on the type of bread you are making.

Ricochet.

So, if you are familiar with when a gun fires

a bullet, if it hits a hard surface at a

very shallow angle, it might bounce off, it will ricochet.

So, again, look at the word ricochet.

We're pronouncing a lot of things

differently than you might expect.

First of all, ricochet.

Ricochet.

So the o has more of an a sound.

Ricochet.

And then the ch is making a sh sound.

So, ricochet.

If you watch old westerns when they're having

a gunfight, often you will hear bullets ricochet

off the buildings around the people.

Or if you're watching a movie where there's a

shootout, you might hear bullets or you see a

little dent show up in the wall beside someone,

and the bullet will ricochet off of the wall.

So, ricochet.

Probably a french word, fluorescence.

So most of our lights are led now,

but we do still have some fluorescence bulbs.

By the way, I spelled this word wrong the first time.

It's uo. This is correct.

But even as an English speaker, I made a

mistake, and then Google auto corrected it for me.

A fluorescent bulb is a tube of glass filled with a

gas that can emit light when electricity goes through it.

That's the basic non scientific definition.

But it's fluorescent.

Again, you really just make one vowel sound.

Fluorescent.

At the beginning, it's two letters, U O.

But it's just fluorescent.

The same as my chair is on the

floor, and this is a fluorescent light.

Sorry, this is actually an led light

ray I'm pointing here, but fluorescent pneumonia.

So, I think near the beginning of the lesson, we

talked about stethoscope, and I said, a doctor can use

a stethoscope to listen to your heart or your lungs,

maybe even your stomach a little bit.

But if you have pneumonia, it means

you have fluid in your lungs.

It means you're very, very sick.

And a doctor might use a stethoscope to listen

to your lungs to see if you have pneumonia.

Another word where the p is silent.

You don't pronounce the p at the beginning.

It's simply pneumonia.

I had pneumonia years ago.

In 2006, I had pneumonia really badly.

It wasn't good at all.

I was off work for a long time.

Then I tend to get sick.

I should stop doing that.

I should try to not get sick. Receipt.

Here is a receipt from Walmart.

I think this person bought a printer.

There's a silent p in this letter. Receipt.

The receipt is the small piece of paper

that you get when you buy something.

Yesterday I was at the mall and I

bought something, and on the screen it said,

do you want to print the receipt?

Do you want to receive the receipt via email or both?

And I selected both.

I thought that sounded like a good idea, to get

the receipt via email as well as a paper copy.

February.

So there's an r in here.

And some people do say it, but most people don't.

February. February. January. February. March. April.

May. June. July. August. September. October, November.

December.

February.

I sometimes say February to be funny. Okay.

But most of the time, people will say February.

You will sometimes hear people

say February, but it's February.

99% of the time, if you hear someone say that month,

they will say February, even though there's an r there.

It's kind of like we just decided it was too

hard to say the r, so we say February.

Penguin.

I don't know why this is on

some lists of hard to pronounce words.

Penguin.

Penguin. Penguin.

I think for most people learning

English, this should be fairly straightforward.

Penguin.

Penguins, by the way, live in Antarctica.

They don't live in the Arctic.

I think there's only penguins at the South Pole.

But penguins are these bird animals that eat

fish and swim in really cold water.

And there's a whole movie about

the march of the penguins.

I think watched that a long time ago,

but it was a good movie, I think.

Penguins, they're cute, righteous.