> 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

Yeah, if the language you're trying to learn has a sound or sounds that the languages you know don't, it can be tough.

Hebrew really only has two sounds that we don't, And the next hardest contender is the tsaddi, which sounds like the "ts" in "rats". The prophet Zephaniah's name really starts with this letter.

As for the sounds it really doesn't have...

First, the Ayin. The Ayin's real sound usually isn't bothered with, and it is treated like an Aleph, that is, it's only there to hang a vowel sound off of, so that a vowel sound can start a word (olam) or follow another vowel sound (mo'ed). However, it does have its own sound. The city of 'Amora starts with this sound, and somebody tried to approximate the sound in the name of this city. The result? "Gomorrah".

Second, the Chet. It is often approximated with an "h" (Hebron) or represented by a "ch" (Rachel), which is confusing to speakers of English. The Bible version "The Scriptures" represents the letter with an "h" with a dot underneath. The Let's Learn Hebrew Picture Dictionary flies a tilde as a pennant off of the "h" to represent it. Hanukkah: The Family Guide to Spiritual Celebration by Dr. Ron Wolfson puts a horizontal line under the "h" for the same purpose. Everywhere where the letter is a Hey, and should sound like our "h", however, the "h" is left unadorned.

The Chet is often compared in sound to the German or Scottish "ch".

In the cases of both the Ayin and the Chet, you may have to hear them being said correctly a few times to truly get it.

The rest of the letters' sounds are accounted for in English: b, g, d, h, v, w, z, t, y, k, l, m, n, s, p, f, r, sh, s, and t. The vowel sounds are also used, but represented with (vowel/diacritical/cantillation) (marks/points) rather than real letters.

Nyperold