Is That Word Difficult or Just Unfamiliar?
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I often hear English learners and English native speakers alike complain that certain English words are “difficult” (in fact, I’ve heard the same thing said by native and non-native speakers of Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, too).
Consider the words shoe and happy. Are these English words difficult? To you and I, these terms are probably as easy and basic as they get. But what about for a 6-month old American child? Or what about for a hunter-gatherer living deep in the Amazonian rain forest who has never heard a word of English spoken or seen any English writing? For both, all English words are more or less “difficult”, or rather, “unfamiliar”.
And that right there gets to my basic contention. There are no “difficult” words in English or any human language; there are just those words that are familiar, or as of now, unfamiliar to you.
Consider the words vapid and insipid. If you are well-read or have just studied for TOEFL, you are probably familiar with the words and would not consider them “difficult”. But if you were to poll the average American high school student, they would probably not know the meaning of either word despite the fact that neither represent advanced cognitive concepts (and in fact have the same basic meaning of “bland, flat, dull or tedious”), have few letters, and are easy to spell. These words aren’t difficult; they are just uncommon and therefore perceived as difficult to the uninitiated.
I do concede, however, that there are some words that are difficult to pronounce in certain languages. One prime example came up yesterday as I was discussing different types of cars with my girlfriend (she has just moved to Seattle and is quickly realizing how lame our public transportation system is compared with Taipei…hence the need for a car). I was explaining the pros and cons of front wheel drive cars and rear wheel drive cars, when I suddenly realized what a mouthful “rear wheel drive” is when said many times fast in quick succession. The combination of r’s, l’s and w’s requires quite a bit of tongue and lips movement and can quickly wear out the mouth muscles. Similar challenges are experienced by Mandarin Chinese learners when trying to wrap their mouths around “retroflex” sounds like [tʂ] (zh), [tʂʰ] (ch), and [ʂ] (sh), that require bending the tip of the tongue back towards the top of your mouth.
But meaning, not pronunciation, is usually what people refer to when they call a word “difficult” (and as I make the case for above). In reality, however, it is not actually the meaning that is the problem, but rather learning the myriad arbitrary connections between meanings and sound combinations in any given language. And the only way to make these connections stick is through lots and lots of listening, supported by lots and lots of reading.
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Interesting points about pronunciation. I've noticed one oddity.
Generally, a person has difficulty pronouncing sounds or sound combinations which do not occur in their own native language. Native Japanese speakers often have difficulty with "L" sounds. Native English speakers have a hard time beginning a word with a "ng" sound, even though that sound occurs in English. (In fact, it occurs in "English," but in the language, it never occurs at the beginning of a word.)
The oddity I've noticed is that native English speakers have no problem at all pronouncing the Russian "vl" combination, as in "Vladimir," "Vladivostok," etc., yet this sound never occurs in English words.
Yes indeed. When I began learning Japanese, it took my mouth a long time to get used to the 'tsu' (つ) and the Japanese 'r' sounds (ら, り, る, れ, ろ) as they have no direct equivalent in English. But now that I am used to them, they are no more difficult that any sounds in English. Again, it all comes down to familiarity (whether on a cognitive or physical level.)
Chuck: I don't know of any words offhand that have a "vla" sound, but there are tons of English words with a "vl" sound. For example, "superlatively" ends in "-vli", or at least that's how a dictionary's pronunciation guide will indicate it.
Or maybe the way to look at it is that "vla-" is the unvoiced version of "bla-", which English does use. Of the (very few!) number of languages I know (poorly!), none that I can think of have a voiced consonant without its unvoiced counterpart, so maybe the human mouth happens to be built such that either is equally easy, for a given consonant pair.
Hi John,
Just wanted to add something to this topic.
I think if we talk about specific words being difficult we need to look at what's the particular word's origin. English language, for instance, is full of words of French, Latin and Greek origin and I think that might be the reason why some words would be more difficult even for native English speakers indeed.
Let's take for example two words describing similar concepts – drive and perseverance. The second word comes from French persévérer. I can see how for a foreign English speaker or even a 12 year old native English speaking kid it could be harder to learn this word than another word with 'purer' English origins.
Having said that I still totally agree that if we look at 'typical' new words of a particular language having standard phonetic patterns they should be equally difficult simply because they're new!
Thanks,
Robby
Thanks for your comment, Robby. While word origins do play a role in the sociolinguistic attributes of a word (e.g. how formal they sound), I don't think it accounts for their difficulty. The Anglo-Norman "perspire" sounds more formal and academic than its Germanic counterpart "sweat" because the Norman monarchs took control of England in 1066, not because it is inherently more difficult.