So you know how every language has that word/phrase/sentence that native speakers can pronounce just fine, but foreigners can almost never pronounce it correctly? And the natives have a lot of fun telling the foreigners to try and say it and laughing at their attempts?
They’re called Shibboleths, and wikipedia has a whole article on them.
Even better, wikipedia has a whole article on examples of them.Some of them are ridiculous, I can’t stop reading this article.
Wow. Cheers for this.
“Art thou an Ephraimite?”
“Um, uh … No?”
“Prove it. Say ‘shibboleth.’”
“Sibboleth.”
“Aha! Die Ephraimite!”
“Oh sit.”
Tags:
#I can never decide whether it’s very fitting or very *un*-fitting that I can’t pronounce ‘shibboleth’ #if it were just ‘word that is extremely difficult to pronounce’ #it would be fitting to have the word for that be extremely difficult to pronounce #but it’s ‘word that native speakers can say easily and everyone *else* finds extremely difficult to pronounce’ #and I am a native English speaker #and I can’t say it #I swear I’m not an Ephraimite please don’t kill me #language #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #fun wif forn fronting
Brinens and Things 
One thought on “”