Phenomenon, remuneration and statistics have topped a list of the most commonly mispronounced words.
Speakers also have a problem getting their tongue around ethnicity, hereditary and particularly, according to the body charged with recording public utterances.
The British Institute Of Verbatim Reporters (BIVR) is the UK's leading organisation for professionals involved in taking down speech at court and tribunal hearings.
A poll of its members found 10 words Britons consistently find the most challenging to pronounce. Completing the list are conjugal, specific, processes and development.
Leah Willersdorf, of the BIVR, said: "We work with many different types of professionals and hear all kinds of voices during our work. However, when it comes to the English language it always seems to be the same few words that trip people up, with the speaker having to repeat the word or just abandoning their attempts and moving on."
BIVR members were quizzed by the team behind the popular word game Scrabble. According to the word buffs, one in 10 players was reluctant to play words that they cannot pronounce.
Scrabble is a favourite with British families over the festive period. Its makers estimate 11 million people will play it on Boxing Day.
Professor Paul Kerswill, a sociolinguistics expert at the University of York said: "People always find a way of simplifying words they find difficult so that an everyday word like 'handbag' sounds like 'hambag'. And most people talk about 'Febry' and 'Wensday'."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article