Difficult words to pronounce in English

170 words that learners, and many native speakers, find hard to say. Each has its own page: US and UK IPA, a simple respelling, the usual mistakes, why it is tricky and a check of your own voice.

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170 words
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All 170 words

170 words

The most searched difficult words

The words people look up most often, from colonel and often to hierarchy and rendezvous.

Words with silent letters

Letters you can see but should not say: the b in climb, the k in knife, the l in salmon.

Words from French, Italian and other languages

English kept the spelling, and often some of the sound, of the language the word came from.

Hard sounds: r, l, th and clusters

Words that pile up sounds many languages do not have: the r and l of rural, the ksθ of sixth.

Everyday words people get wrong

Common words with one surprising sound or a syllable too many, from nuclear to mischievous.

Long words from Greek and Latin

Words you meet in books and at work, where the spelling hides the stress.

Why English spelling does not match the sound

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English spelling was mostly fixed when printing arrived in the late 1400s. The spoken language went on changing. The long vowels shifted, so the letters kept the old sounds while the words moved on. Words that went silent, like the k in knife, kept their letters.

English also borrowed from many languages and kept their spellings: French (rendezvous, bouquet), Italian (espresso, gnocchi), Greek (rhythm, psychology) and Latin. Some scholars even added letters to match a word’s Latin source. The b in debt was added that way, and nobody started saying it.

So guessing from the spelling often fails. What works is learning the stress and the one surprising sound in each word. That is what each page here is built around.

Difficult words FAQ

What are the hardest words to pronounce in English?

It depends on your first language, but a few words trouble almost everyone: colonel (said like kernel), Worcestershire, rural, squirrel, mischievous, sixth and thorough. The reasons are the same each time: letters that are not said, stress in an unexpected place, or a sound that is missing from your own language.

Why is English pronunciation so hard?

English spelling was fixed by printers in the 1400s and 1500s, while the spoken language kept changing. The sounds of long vowels shifted, words arrived from French, Latin, Greek and Italian with their own spellings, and scholars added letters to show where a word came from. The spelling therefore tells you the history of a word, not how to say it.

How do I learn to pronounce difficult words?

Learn the stress first, because the wrong stress hurts understanding more than one wrong vowel. Then look at the IPA or the respelling, listen to the word slowly and at full speed, and say it out loud in a short sentence. Record yourself and listen back. On each page here you can do all of that.

Is there a difference between American and British pronunciation?

Yes. Americans say the r at the end of a syllable and British speakers mostly do not. Some words differ in the vowel or the stress, and a few differ a lot. Every word here shows both, and says which dictionary lists which form when they differ.

Where do the pronunciations come from?

Each IPA transcription was checked against the Cambridge Dictionary and the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Where the two dictionaries differ, the page says so. The recordings are American English.

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