{"id":192340,"date":"2025-10-11T07:53:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/192340\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T07:53:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:53:18","slug":"break-phone-addiction-by-switching-your-display-to-grayscale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/192340\/","title":{"rendered":"Break phone addiction by switching your display to grayscale"},"content":{"rendered":"

The English language<\/a> is hard to master, even for native speakers. With over an estimated one million words<\/a> in the language, not only are English words hard to memorize\u2014they can be hard to properly pronounce<\/a> and enunciate<\/a>. Getting tripped up with pronunciation can make your communication unclear, or worse\u2014make you sound uneducated.<\/p>\n

As American English teacher Vanessa<\/a> explains, many mispronounced words are common and used in daily conversation due to tricky consonants and vowels in English words. But by knowing the proper pronunciation, it can help you become a more confident speaker, which is why she shared 33 words that are hard for English language learners to pronounce, such as “probably,” “drawer,” and “sixth.”<\/p>\n

On the subreddit r\/words<\/a>, a person posed the question: “What’s a word you’ve noticed many native English speakers have difficulty enunciating even though the word is used fairly often?”<\/p>\n

Turns out, there are a menagerie of words people notoriously stumble over. These are 27 English words that people say are the hardest to enunciate.<\/p>\n

– YouTube www.youtube.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

Tricky ‘R’ words<\/p>\n

“The word I notice people struggle with is ‘vulnerable’. Something about that N following an L is tricky.” – common_grounder<\/p>\n

“Rural.” – Silent-Database5613<\/p>\n

\u201c’Nucular’ for nuclear.” – throwawayinthe818<\/p>\n

“Remuneration v renumeration (first one is correct).” – RonanH69<\/p>\n

“February. It sounds like you’re pronouncing it like it’s spelled Febuary. But it’s spelled February.” – SDF5-0, ShadedSpaces<\/p>\n

“Mirror. Some people pronounce it ‘meer’.” – weinthenolababy, diversalarums<\/p>\n

“Anthropomorphize is a word I have to use semi-frequently with limited success each attempt.” – ohn_the_quain<\/p>\n

“I can\u2019t say the phrase ‘rear wheel’ without considerable effort.” – ohn_the_quain<\/p>\n

“Eraser (erasure, but they’re talking about the pink rubber thing).” – evlmgs<\/p>\n

– YouTube www.youtube.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

Multiple syllables<\/p>\n

“Exacerbated vs exasperated.” – SNAFU-lophagus<\/p>\n

“‘Asterisk’. A lot of people wind up inadvertently name-checking Asterix<\/a>. I think it’s best for those who struggle to use the alternative name for that punctuation mark, the ‘Nathan Hale’, after the American patriot who famously declared, ‘I can only regret that I have but one asterisk for my country!'” – John_EightThirtyTwo<\/p>\n

“I realized recently I have always mispronounced mischievous. It’s mis-chiv-us, not mis-chee-vee-us. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone pronounce that correctly.” – callmebigley”<\/p>\n

‘Supposebly’ [supposedly]. Drives me up the wall.” – BlushBrat<\/p>\n

“Library. My coworker knows I hate it, so he\u2019ll say Liberry every time.” – Jillypenny”ET cetera, not ‘ect’ cetera. I think people are used to seeing the abbreviation etc and since there is no diphthong tc in English their mind bends it into ect.” – AdFrequent4623<\/p>\n

“The amount of people who say Pacific when they’re trying to stay specific is pretty alarming. I’m not even sure if they know it’s a different word sometimes.” – Global-Discussion-41<\/p>\n

“Then there was my old boss who would confidently and consistently use the word tenant when he meant tenet.” – jaelith”<\/p>\n

“Probably.” – Rachel_Silver<\/p>\n

“Contemplate. It’s one of those word I hear people stumble over more than anything, often it comes out as Comtemplate, Contempate or a combination of both.” – megthebat49<\/p>\n

– YouTube www.youtube.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

Foods<\/p>\n

“Turmeric. People drop the first R. It drives me nuts!” – Jillypenny<\/p>\n

“Oh, and it\u2019s espresso, no X [ex-presso].” – Jillypenny<\/p>\n

“Also cardamom with an N.” – nemmalur<\/p>\n

“Pumpkin (punkin).” – evlmgs<\/p>\n

\"espresso, sipping modern family GIF Giphy<\/a> <\/p>\n

Awkward vowels<\/p>\n

“Crayon \ud83d\udc51. My ex pronounced it ‘cran’. Drove me up a wall.” – rickulele, premeditatedlasagna<\/p>\n

‘Mute’ for moot. A good friend of mine, who’s extremely intelligent and articulate otherwise, says that. Unfortunately, it’s a word she likes to use. I haven’t had the heart to tell her she’s pronouncing it incorrectly, and it’s been three decades.” NewsSad5006, common_grounder<\/p>\n

“Jewelry.” – weinthenolababy<\/p>\n

“I hear grown adults calling wolves woofs and they’re not doing it to be funny.” – asexualrhino<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The English language is hard to master, even for native speakers. With over an estimated one million words…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[226,84238,4604,1906,2306,6994,84239,84240,2334,224,227,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-192340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-apps","9":"tag-doomscrolling","10":"tag-life-hacks","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-phones","14":"tag-scrolling","15":"tag-smartphone-addiction","16":"tag-smartphones","17":"tag-social-media","18":"tag-tech","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}