Hardest sound to pronounce-independent ofthe motherlanguage?

JPT   Fri Mar 05, 2010 1:50 am GMT
the ř in Czech can take a lot of practice
ø   Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:40 am GMT
Arabic /q/ is a pain. Just try to say /iqi/ without having it come out as /iʔqɑi/.
Danish pharyngealized vowels are also strange. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VziyktyS0
paj   Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:47 am GMT
<<I found all Japanese sounds nice and straightforward. >>

even the Japanese u?? I always have to think about it. "ok, lips like an "ee", tongue like an "oo"
Fruit   Fri Mar 05, 2010 1:33 pm GMT
French "fruit".
Here we have a nearly impossible combination: Fr. 'r' followed by a front rounded 'u' used as a semi-consonant introducing the 'i'.
No non-native speaker will ever be able to pronounce it correctly. It takes more than one life to get full command of it.
Baldewin   Fri Mar 05, 2010 1:46 pm GMT
If you keep pronouncing fruit repeatedly, you sound like a pig.
Penetra   Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:46 pm GMT
What about double consonants in Italian? I'm pretty certain I enunciate those as stops.
Peruzzi   Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:52 pm GMT
No man u are yanking my chain.
Double consonant in italian is very easy.
Ok,i admit,maybe not easy like A E I O U but in one day or two u get it.

Italian is maybe the easiest language to pronounce.
Even spanish is harder, th,j,ñ,ll,what more?
Note that im not spanish.
Franco   Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:57 pm GMT
LL is no longer pronounced properly (/ʎ/). People pronounce LL like consonantic Y, so you can simply so the same. Anyways Italian does have the /ʎ/ sound. The same happens with ñ,in Italian gn has the same pronunciation than ñ. Th is like in English so if you know English in Spanish it's the same. J can be aspirated on the other hand like in Andalusian Spanish and American Spanish if you don't want to deal with /x/.
Spanish is objectively the easiest language to pronunce as you can see.