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.”
re: your tags, native speakers of hebrew probably, not native speakers of english
Well, English is known for its extensive use of “th”, and that’s where the problem comes in for me. (In fact, the original Hebrew word might have used a perfectly pronounceable “t”, though it’s not clear from a few minutes of looking things up.)
Tags:
#language #reply via reblog #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #fun wif forn fronting
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 
2 thoughts on “”