> But, again, it's not pronouncing the word that's hard, it's figuring out the pronunciation from the spelling. It's the spelling's fault again, not the pronunciation.

Ah, yes, that's precisely what I meant. I didn't think of words that were *difficult* to pronounce. Do many languages have sounds that are actually tough to make, though? Aside from English, I've studied Japanese and German and found them both relatively easy to pronounce. Japanese is simple (their "r" sound is the only one we don't have, but is usually pretty easy for Westerners to pick up) and German never seemed that tough to pronounce.

For what it's worth, though, I've been told by Japanese people that it's much easier for native English speakers to pronounce Japanese correctly than it is for native Japanese speakers to pronounce English properly. We have a number of sounds they don't (the consonants v, l and r, for instance).

I wonder if difficulty in pronounciation is more relative than difficulty in other things? I.e. if you come from a language in which there are a lot of varied sounds, pronouncing foreign languages is probably easier than it would be for a person whose native tongue is more limited.

Ste "I wonder how tough it is to learn that clicking African Bushman language" phen