> 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.

Visiting an ancient thread here, I think it's interesting that you say this, because those are the two "foreign" sounds I find the easiest to pronounce, followed closely by the "ch" in German "ich" (not the same as the German "ch" you're probably thinking of). Most of the other R's besides the rolled/tapped ones are really hard for me. German, French, and Dutch have a uvular R, which is exactly what it sounds like, and it's easily the most difficult sound in German for me. Likewise, the British "r" is supposed to be an "alveolar approximant" that, unlike my own, isn't retroflex (meaning it doesn't point backwards). The closest I can get is a vague wagging.

Russian and a lot of the other Slavic languages have a bunch of palatal consonants, and those are really hard for me. And I've always had trouble with things that do unexpected or strange things with voicing (the Welsh "ll", for instance). I can say with pretty much 100% certainty that I'll never learn Russian, because it has so much palatalization.

Actually, now that I think about it, one of the biggest problems for me in language is when I try to do other English accents, such as various British accents, or certain (U.S.) East Coast ones. See, whatever accent it was that led to much of the range of accents of the Midwest and West had a phenomenon happen where the vowels in the words "cot" and "caught" merged, so in the resulting accents/dialects they're pronounced identically. My native dialect has the sounds merged, and as a result I have no idea how to tell which word I should say which way if I'm trying to do an accent that didn't undergo this sound change. I suppose this is why I'm switching over to directing instead of acting.

-Eric Sleator