Question I know that foreigners sometimes have difficulty pronouncing some American English sounds.
Of the following American English consonant and vowel sounds, are there any that native speakers of the Finnish and Swedish languages have trouble pronouncing?
Consonants: B,D,H,J,K,M,S,T,SK,SM,ST.
Vowels: A(as in day), E(as in see), O(as in go), U(as in to).
Thank You very much. Tony Hatch
Answer Tony,
Yes, these letters are pronounced differently in the Finnish and Swedish alphabets. I will spell each out phonetically for you and then you can see why that they could be quite foreign. And in Finnish, even though letters like b and d are in the alphabet, they are only ever used in loan words (words borrowed from another origin) and those words do not fully represent the true Finnish sound. Here it goes, and I will phonetically spell out the Finnish alphabet since that is the one I am more familiar with and the Swedish one is not that much different. b-bay d-day h-hoe j-yee k-koe m-emm s-ess t-tay there is no sk in Finnish but in Swedish this has 2 sounds, one would be sk as in skit the other would be sh as in shell sm is pronounced as it is spelled. st is also the same. vowels, a-like in fall e-as in let 0-as in on u-as in loon i-is like free and the extra vowels in Finnish are ä-as in cat, å-as in boat and ö-as in fur
Hopefully this helps you a little bit.
