Sixth, successful, and scissors, are just a few examples of the hardest words to pronounce in English.
Learning English as a second language is hard: between confusing verb conjugations and seemingly random grammar rules, even native English speakers get things wrong a lot of the time.
This goes for pronunciation too. The English language has some of the hardest words to pronounce that most non-native and native speakers can agree upon. Let’s look at 12 of the hardest words to pronounce in English. If you can master these, you can master anything.
1. Colonel
Once you know that you pronounce this word, which means “an army officer”, the same way you pronounce “kernel,” it isn’t super difficult.
But if you are new to learning English or you’re not a native English speaker, it’s almost guaranteed that you wouldn’t know how to pronounce it. Even young native English speakers will pronounce this as “Col-oh-nell.”
Thankfully, you probably won’t run across this work very often and once you know how to pronounce it, it won’t give you too much trouble.
2. Rural
Rural seems to give everyone, even native English speakers, trouble. It was even a long-running joke on the TV show 30 Rock: a character stars in a film called “The Rural Juror” that nobody can pronounce. Everyone incorrectly pronounces it as something like, “The Ruhhhrrr Jurrr.”
You actually pronounce it as, “Roor-uhl.”
3. Worcestershire
While Brits might not have as much trouble with this one, most Americans and non-native English speakers agree that Worcestershire is one of the most difficult words to pronounce. It refers both to a town in England as well as a to a delicious sauce people put on meat and beef stew.
People instinctively pronounce it as “Wore-chester-shy-err” or as “Wore-sesst-err-sheer,” both of which are pretty good attempts for those who haven’t seen this word before. It’s easy to get confused with the “cest” in the middle of the word and the unusual pronunciation of the “shire” at the end.
It is actually pronounced “Wooster-sheer.”
4. Mischievous
This is another English word that both native and non-native speakers agree is a doozy. Mischievous means something or someone is a troublemaker or, literally, full of mischief.
Most people incorrectly pronounce this as “Miss-cheev-ee-us.” However, if you think of the word this word comes from (“mischief”) it makes sense that it is actually pronounced “Miss-chiv-us.”
5. Draught
The “au” and the “ght” letter combinations in this word throws a lot of people off. While these letters usually would result in a pronunciation of this word as something like “drot,” that’s actually the wrong pronunciation.
You actually pronounce this word as “draft”. English has a lot of irregularities in spelling and pronunciation, and this word gives you both irregular letter combinations along with a strange pronunciation, which makes it one of the hardest words to pronounce.
6. Anemone
Remember the scene in Finding Nemo when Nemo can’t pronounce the name of his home on the coral reef? This is the word he was trying to say.
The excess amount of vowels and the spelling make it look like it should be pronounced like “bone,” but it’s another difficult word to say that doesn’t really follow normal rules.
Anemone is pronounced “Uh-nem-o-nee,” which isn’t immediately obvious based on the spelling.
7. Quinoa
Quinoa is a type of grain that is super popular among vegans and health nuts nowadays. It also isn’t pronounced as “Key-no-ah,” no matter how much it looks like it should be pronounced that way.
More than half the letters are vowels, and these vowel combinations usually would yield that pronunciation. However, this superfood is said as, “Keen-wah.” It’s rooted from Spanish, which gives it this interesting (and difficult) pronunciation.
8. Scissors
The multiple “s” and “c” combinations in this word make it difficult to wrap your lips around. It’s a pretty common word in the English language and you might learn it early on in your English education.
That doesn’t make the 3 different “s” sounds any easier to pronounce. Once you learn that the initial “sc” doesn’t make a hard “SK” sound, you then have to get used to a singular item ending in an “s” that usually signifies a plural. Good luck getting used to this one!
9. Isthmus
Multiple “s” sounds in one word is usually hard for non-native English speakers to get used to, as we learned with “Scissors.” Isthmus adds another tough letter combination, “th,” directly into the middle of the word. Some languages don’t have this letter combination, which makes learning it in a second language quite difficult.
It gets even more confusing when you learn that the “th” in this word is silent.
In the end, this word sounds like “Is-muss.”
10. Floccinaucinihilipilification
We couldn’t get through this list without throwing in a super long and complex word for you to work out. This is a noun that means something is meaningless or worthless. It happens to be the longest non-technical word in the English language.
It’s a combination of 5 different Latin words, and it can be heard pronounced here. The good news with this word is that it’s rarely used, so you likely won’t have to deal with it.
11. Sixth
We have another word dealing with tricky “s” sounds along with the strange letter combination of “xth.” The mash-up of an “s” sound with the “xth” sound makes this one of the top words that are hard to say for both native and non-native speakers.
12. Successful
We will round out this list with another word made difficult by multiple different “s” and “c” sounds. Both the double “c” and the double “s” confuse people learning to pronounce this word, and the similar sounds in a row make it somewhat of a tongue twister.
You say this word as “Suck-sess-full.”
These Are the Hardest Words to Pronounce in English: Are You Up for the Challenge?
English likes to make seemingly random changes to rules and pronunciation, as you can see from this list. These are some of the hardest words to pronounce in the entire language, so if you can be successful with these, you’re on the right track.
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