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One of the world’s rarest sounds is part of American English, and we use it every day

It's an odd sound, globally speaking.

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Learning to make sounds we didn't grow up with can be tricky.

When (or if) kids learn phonics at school, they're taught the symbols that go with sounds of their country's native language or languages. People all around the world grow up learning to make specific sounds with their mouths by imitating the language(s) they are immersed in, which can leave us completely unaware of how many other sounds there are until we hear a language that's far different from our own.

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Even the common foreign languages that American school kids learn have sounds that can be tricky to get down. The rolled "r" in Spanish. The nuances of French vowel pronunciations. The glottal stops in German. The sound that's a mix between "r" and "l" in Japanese. And for people learning English, one of the trickiest sounds to get down is "er," as in the American pronunciation of "bird," "world," "summer," or "percent."

Oddly enough, for as common as the "er" sound is in English, it's linguistically rare. According to the Linguistics Channel @human1011, the "er" sound is found in less than 1% of the world's languages, rarer than the click consonants found in some languages in East and Southern Africa.


- YouTube www.youtube.com

Although the sound is rare, many people worldwide use it, primarily because it's also used in Mandarin Chinese, or at least many of its variations. So, while there aren't many languages that use it, by sheer numbers of people, it's not that uncommon.

"So, a sound that's so rare that it's in less than 1% of the world's languages just happens to exist in the two most spoken languages on Earth? Can that really be a coincidence?" the @human1011 video asks. Well, yes. English and Chinese don't share a common linguistic root, so those sounds just happened to evolve in very different parts of the planet. According to some people in the comments of the video, there are regional dialects in Brazil where the "er" sound is used and in certain parts of the Netherlands as well.

Pronouncing the "er" sound is hard if you don't grow up with it, largely because it's all about the placement and shape of the tongue inside the mouth combined with the way the lips are positioned. That combination is physically tricky to show someone. This video, from a non-native-English-speaker does a good job of explaining the mouth movements that create the sound.

In the video below, Lisa, who was orignally born in Russia, teaches non-native speakers how to make the R sound so prevalent in the English language. "I'm a native American English speaker, and this is a great explanation of the mouth shape and tongue position! It's really hard as a native speaker to try to explain, but you made it very clear," the most popular commenter on the video wrote.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

What's particularly interesting about the "er" sound in American English is that it functions as a vowel sound. Most of us learned that the vowels in English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y, and that's true as far as written vowels go, but vowel sounds are different. In the word "bird," the letter "i" is a vowel, but doesn't make any of the "i" sounds that we learned in school. Instead, the "ir" combine to make the "er" vowel sound. It's called an r-controlled vowel, and we see it in tons of words like "work," "were," "burn," "skirt," etc.

Learn something new every day, right?

Here's another video that explains the physical aspects of articulating the r-controlled vowel sound.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Most of us don't consider that the sounds we pronounce without thinking are actually skills that need to be learned and practiced by people who didn't grow up with them. It's not until we start trying to learn a language that's different from our own that we see how many sounds we have to work hard to make, sometimes even having to train our mouth muscles in ways they've never been used before.

It's also a good reminder to be patient and kind with people who are learning a language. It's not easy, and anyone making an effort to communicate in someone else's language deserves our grace and kudos.

You can follow @human1011 on YouTube for more interesting linguistics trivia.

This post originally appeared earlier this year.

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People rally around Brazilian woman learning English after her accent is rudely criticized

Their response says so much more than any critic ever could.

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People rally around woman learning English after man criticizes her

There is nothing about learning English that is easy if it's not your first language. Heck, you could probably find more than a few native English speakers that continue to get tripped up on different words, meanings and grammar rules. There are so many words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have completely different meanings.

English also borrows the sounds or spellings of words from other languages just to mix things up a bit. So when an adult tries to learn the language for the first time, it's understandable why it can be a little frustrating. But Mary Gomes, a woman from Brazil has been enthusiastically learning English on her own amassing millions of "teachers" online.

The native Portuguese speaker gained traction from her infectious joy while reading English from pre-written notes in an effort to learn the language. She calls her viewers teachers as they often help her with pronunciation and correct emphasis on certain parts of speech in the comments. But recently the "teachers" have been trying to dry the tears of Gomes after an unpleasant encounter with a caller.

Gomes who is normally extremely bubbly in her videos appears red faced and somber in a recent video uploaded to TikTok. The mom of three explains through tears that she received a phone call from someone who needed to verify information but the caller began getting frustrated with the new English speaker. There was a miscommunication when the man on the other end of the phone asks Gomes for her address from seven years ago.

Since Gomes just started learning English in March 2024, she's not fluent yet and has a heavy Portuguese accent. This led to anger from the man when she struggled to give him the address. In her video she takes a deep breath to try to explain.

"I'm sorry. The name of the address is 190 T-H but I don't know how I say this number in English you know. 190 T-H, I think I speak wrong and NE. I said NE but I don't know, I think it's north east, north east. I don't know if I speak wrong, I don't know but the guy was so rude, so rude you know," she says through tears.

woman sitting near the osfa Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

The man tells Gomes the address isn't found. Gomes says she tries to apologize to the man for misspeaking or him not being able to understand her. She tells her followers the interaction left her feeling small.

"Because I've been struggling to learn English. I do my best every day and when this happened. When this thing happened I feel oh my gosh why," Gomes cries.

People were hurt for Gomes as she has spent months learning to speak English and no longer needs to use notes to record videos. Commenters left the emotional woman positive comments to encourage Gomes to keep learning, praising her ability to speak more clearly now than when she first started.

One person notes, "the fact that you told this entire story so clearly in English shows how well you are doing."

"You are being able to express such deep feelings in a language that is not your native language, and that's really difficult, so, you are doing an amazing job Mary. Please don't feel discouraged," another person shares.

"Mary even as a native English speaker I forget words and mess up! I remember when you were still reading out of a notebook to make videos and look at you now telling a full story even while emotional," someone praises the upset woman.

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"Numbers in a second language are so so so hard!!! I can't even remember all of my addresses in English! You're struggling, but you're learning & expressing yourself so well, even while upset," one commenter writes.

Someone else encourages Gomes, "it hurts my heart to see you so upset! The world is such a cruel place sometimes. You're doing so well, we are all so proud of you. Don't let the worst people pull you down."

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People tried to help Gomes with the correct pronunciation of the number but were unclear on what number she was saying due to her accent. She clarified in the comments that she was attempting to say 190th which people heard as 1938, 19038 or 908. Since the interaction was over the phone, Gomes wasn't able to write the number down for the man to see to better understand her.

In the end, though Gomes was left in tears, she was reminded of how many people are rooting for her success. Learning a new language is hard and when dealing with people who have less patience for your endeavor, it can be deflating. The support Gomes is getting isn't waining. People wish her nothing but the best hoping she will continue trying to learn.

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Comedian's 'English lessons' highlight the absurdity of English spelling and pronunciation

Nothing but sympathy for anyone trying to learn English as a second language.

Courtesy of Bobby Finn/Instagram

English makes no sense.

If you've ever tried to learn another language, you know what a daunting task it is to grasp different grammar, syntax, pronunciation and spelling rules, in addition to the exceptions to those rules. Other than something like Esperanto, the thousands of languages humans speak weren't purposefully invented, but evolved over millennia, which means the structures of them don't always make perfect, logical sense.

The English language is a perfect example.

English spelling and pronunciation are just utterly chaotic.

Despite being one of the most taught languages in the world, English is notoriously difficult to learn. So much of it is simply nonsensical, and there are so many exceptions to the rules it sometimes feels like there's no point to even having the rules. This is especially true when it comes to the way combinations of letters are pronounced differently in different words.

Comedian Bobby Finn highlights the absurdity of English spelling and pronunciation in his "English Class" videos, which showcase how futile it is to try to logic your way through learning the language.

For instance:

Finn's "You don't see how?" and "Why would you think?" are the perfect tongue-in-cheek responses to the confusion on the student's face when none of the logical conclusions he lays out add up.

And it just keeps going…

And he didn't even get to how "read and "read" and "tear" and "tear" and "lead" and "lead" are different pairs of words spelled the same but pronounced differently and with a different meaning.

Clearly the "ea" diphthong is an issue, but it's certainly not the only one. There is a seemingly endless list of English letter combos that combine in head-scratching ways as if they were purposefully designed to confuse and confound.

We've all been down the dreaded "ough" road, right? Imagine trying to learn this stuff as a second-language learner.

Teaching English requires either major gaslighting or admitting it's non-sensical

"Nooooo. Why would you think?" and "Remember what I said earlier." Hoo boy, you really can't teach English without either gaslighting the dickens out of students or just admitting that there's no rhyme or reason to anything. People who teach English and those who have had to learn it shared their delight at him nailing the assault on the brain that is English language learning.

"As an English major, former English instructor, and current supervisor of English, I vehemently agree that English makes no sense! 😂"

"The more of these videos i see, the more amazed i am that i actually learned English 😂."

"Oh man I’m reliving the trauma of my younger self learning English as a second language. 😆"

"OMG flashbacks of being in that seat having to answer the ESL teacher’s questions and all variations playing in my head knowing that there is no way I am going to guess the right one. Lol 🤣"

"I feel so awful for anyone that has to learn English as a second language. It’s chaotic."

"As a native English speaker, I apologise to everyone learning English for the chaos that it is. 🤣"

"As a teacher with lots of ESL students, when they ask 'how,' I just apologize. 😂"

"I love that there is no REAL explanation from teacher about why he is getting it wrong. Just the wonderful “NO” coupled with the wonderfully condescending repetition of the proper sounds. 😂💀👌🏼"

via GIPHY

Why do so many people learn English if it's so hard?

English may be somewhat ridiculous, but it has become an increasingly important one to learn. It's an official language in 75 countries (39% of countries in the world) and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. More than half of the world's scientific and technical periodicals are published in English and English has long been the language of international business.

In the absence of a truly universal language, English is arguably becoming a default common language. It's not unusual to travel to different countries and see signs in the country's language and in English. Even within the European Union, people from countries that speak different languages natively often find common ground in their basic command of English, which the most widely understood language in the EU.

As of now, somewhere between 15% and 20% of people on Earth speak English either as a primary or secondary language. Unless we get moving on choosing a more appropriate auxiliary language for everyone to learn in addition to their native language, it looks like English is a wise–even if frustrating—language to learn.

You can follow Bobby Finn on Instagram for more comedy.

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Language expert shares what English sounds like to people who don't speak it

You feel like you should understand him but can't.

via Sander Sammy/Unsplash and Ospan Ali/Unsplash

People are really cofused by this strange language.

For English speakers, it can feel impossible to conceive of what the language sounds like to those who don’t speak it. So, to give people an idea of how it’s heard by foreign ears, LanguageSimp, a hyperpolyglot, created a video on TikTok to simulate the experience of what English sounds like to non-speakers.

(A hyperpolyglot is someone who speaks multiple languages.)

The fake Ensligh spoken by LangugeSimp comprises a few English words in non-sensical patterns mixed with familiar sounds that are commonly heard in the language. The strange version of English being spoken sounds a lot like Simlish, the language used by characters in The Sims franchise.

"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again... He out here speaking in Simlish," Michael Romanazzi wrote in the comments. People with keen ears may notice LanguageSimp uttering a strange phrase: “You’re literally dog water.”

Ever wondered what it’s like to not understand English? 

@languagesimp

Ever wondered what it’s like to not understand English? #english #languages #language #linguistics #USA #polyglot

The video is fun because it gives English-speaking people a unique perspective on their mother tongue. Hopefully, it also makes people a bit more empathetic towards those trying to learn the language.

"It sounds like I should be able to understand, but when I try it makes no sense," DoggoDraagon commented.

The video brought back memories for many who have had to learn English as a second language.

"That’s how it sounded when I first moved to America; no wonder I can’t remember what they were saying to me," Julio added. "As someone who grew up speaking only Spanish in Spain, learning English and understanding it was hard as hell," Mimi commented.

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