Alas, she can only say "f..k you".

And forget "squirrel"!

Tom

I don't know what that means exactly, but it's still funny.

Native Italian speakers cannot say "squirrel" in any recognizable form!

When we were in the US this summer, my sisters came up with this for her to learn:

"Earl the squirrel is a girl who twirls her pearls."

Yes, they are twisted.

Tom

Forget me???? tad harsh, at christmas time too!

Oh, that's funny! I should ask my Italian mother-in-law to try to say it.

On a somewhat similar note, it seems that a lot of native Swiss speakers have trouble with the "th" sound. I tutored a Swiss guy in English and one of his exercises was to say the number 33,333.

He he My wife still finds it very hard to pronounce squirrel.

Funnily enough, in the beginning my hardest word to pronounce was 'Eichhörnchen'. German for squirrel...

Come si dice in Italiano Tom?

My daughter had a friend whose surname was 'Thistleworth' who lived in 'Theddignworth' - struggled with that for a while

One of our friends is called Thistlethwaite and her students had a terrible job pronouncing her name so she started the trend of calling the teachers by their first name. They found it much easier to say Madame Emily and that has now become the norm in that school in rural France.

Écureuil (squirrel in French) is one of the words I find very difficult to pronounce. Grenouille ( frog) is another.

Actually that was her name, not Thistleworth!!!

Cynthia still have problems

Scoiattolo (ecureuil en francais).

Since they are rare here, we have hundreds of squirrel photos from our US trip!

Tom

Why, are you Flemish speaking Belgian? I find them pretty easy. The French "u" always got me at first, but that was 38 years ago.

Tom

I'm not actually any kind of Belgian.(but my son is hence the username)

It's not the "u" in general I have problems with but rather the ouille sound. I's not and easy sound for a Yorkshire native to master.

Somehow I can think of only one other word ending in ouille in French...

Aren't they chipmunks in the US?

I remember hand feeding an obese chipmunk in California a few years ago. They are cute, but much chubbier than our European squirrels and with a tail less furry.

Your wife must appreciate haute cuisine - does she cook?

You've just got a filthy mind. Go wash your mouth out with soap and water.
Oh silly me you were thinking of 'rouille' weren't you?

No, a chipmunk is a different animal.
Here the squirrels are small and red, while in the US they're large and grey

..... something long, hard, red and throbbing, shooting skywards at a high rate of knots.

Chipmunk



Squirrel