Distinctive Sounds in Other Languages That Are Not Readily Available to English Speakers

Linguist Olly Richards of Storylearning, who previously spoke about English accents that are difficult to understand, talked about a number of distinctive sounds that are used in other languages that are not readily available to those who only speak English.

Across the world, languages hide sounds that English never prepared us for - from nasal vowels to the mysterious side-hiss L.

The list includes nasal sounds from French and Portuguese, umlauts in German, trilling Rs in Spanish, Ayin in Arabic, and several more. Richards also explained that while these sounds appear foreign to English speakers, they can be learned.

There's nothing wrong with you at all if you can't make these sounds. They are genuinely very very hard. It's just that your brain has been stuck on English mode. So, I am going to show you why these tricky sounds are so hard for us English speakers in the first place and the exact techniques you can use to produce them properly to make them a whole lot easier.

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