> 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.

I think that's exactly it. Earlier you were talking about *figuring out* the pronunciation of English words, which IS difficult and non-intuitive. But once you know, the difficulty of pronouncing words in English or any other language tends to have more to do with what language(s) the person speaks in the first place.

The most difficult sounds for me in continental European languages, for example, are the German "ch" sound, sort of a guttural grinding throaty thing, and the rolled R's in several languages. Meanwhile, the English sound most continental European people seem to have the most trouble with is our "th," which does not exist in many other languages. And like you said, the Japanese tend to have trouble with v, l, and r, which do not exist in Japanese, but they're automatic for us.

The other potential pronunciation stumbling block would be familiar sounds in unfamiliar permutations -- but this is much easier to handle. English doesn't have an "sr" sound, but we have "s", "r", and "sir", which are close. And who has a problem saying "Sri Lanka"?