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When my little sister was young (3 years old or so) she pronounced her R sound and her L sounds as "W"... so my name became "Wowen" instead of "Lauren."  I think these sounds are difficult for young children because it is difficult to see the placement of the tongue when trying to learn these sounds.  She learned eventually the correct pronunciation and is now a speech therapist!

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When speaking Spanish, I have a hard time rolling my r's. I think this might be because producing that sound requires a certain degree of tongue dexterity that I have yet to develop.

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I remember when I was growing up I had a hard time differentiating between the hard "g" and the soft "g". For instance, grateful, or going vs. gym or general.

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When teaching in Taiwan, I had trouble teaching the short "i" vowel sound. Chinese speakers have a tendency to pronounce it as "e" (long "e" sound). For instance, they will say "these" rather than "this."

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I have noticed that young students learning digraphs often have trouble learning to say the th sound. Th can often sound like an f, so articulating the difference can be challenging. Personally, I have had trouble making the rolling r sound that is common in Spanish. The rolling r sound is not in any words in English, so it is not something I am used to, or had practiced previously. 

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I have noticed that young students learning digraphs often have trouble learning to say the th sound. Th can often sound like an f, so articulating the difference can be challenging. Personally, I have had trouble making the rolling r sound that is common in Spanish. The rolling r sound is not in any words in English, so it is not something I am used to, or had practiced previously. 

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I find it very challenging to teach some of my Chinese students to pronounce their Rs correctly; I think it's difficult because they don't have that sound in their language, so they mouth has never had a chance to "learn" it.  In addition, trying to get my native Spanish-speaking ELLs to vocalize the ending "s" in plural nouns in which a consonant comes before the ending "s" --dogs or cats for example--makes me break out in hives. :-)  It's very difficult for them to remember this rule because plural nouns in Spanish never end with a consonant plus an s; a vowel is always added first. For example, the word for computer in Spanish is ordenador. The plural would be ordenadores, and the "es" is pronounced as the ending syllable. 

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I find it very challenging to teach some of my Chinese students to pronounce their Rs correctly; I think it's difficult because they don't have that sound in their language, so they mouth has never had a chance to "learn" it.  In addition, trying to get my native Spanish-speaking ELLs to vocalize the ending "s" in plural nouns in which a consonant comes before the ending "s" --dogs or cats for example--makes me break out in hives. :-)  It's very difficult for them to remember this rule because plural nouns in Spanish never end with a consonant plus an s; a vowel is always added first. For example, the word for computer in Spanish is ordenador. The plural would be ordenadores, and the "es" is pronounced as the ending syllable. 

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My daughter would mispronounce the -er/-ur sounds as -oo.  If one looks at the mouth of the person making those sounds while listening to the pronunciation, the position of the lips is the same.  I think that having to distinguish how and where the -r sound comes in is a challenge if it is a new sound.  My daughter did this until she was close to 3.

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For my son, the S sound has always been challenging. When he was young, his S sound looked and sounded like a TH. I did not correct it thinking it would fix itself as he got older. As he grew, he refined his S slightly--it no longer sounded fully like a TH, but it still wasn't right--looked like his tongue was still touching his front teeth. He went to speech therapy, probably around age 12, and they taught the mechanics of making an S sound, and gave him words that contained an S in the beginning, middle or end to practice. I think it helped for him to learn what he was doing mechanically, but it has been hard to fix. I would say it's still not a clear S sound. I don't know why this was a tough sound for him. To me, it feels like a more complex sound to form with the positioning of the tongue.

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I have a good number of Japanese students who frequently pronounce "r"s as "l"s in the middle of words. So "history" becomes "histoly", but "right" stays "right".
I think the sounds are so difficult because the "r" and "l" sounds use a similar shape of the tongue, but the "r" sound is farther back in the mouth. They have time to manipulate their mouth to form the "r" in "right", but they lack the practice in going from sounds in the front of the mouth ("h", "s", "t") to the middle of the mouth. This gets better as they practice; they can hear the difference, which is really helpful. There are some pronunciations that my students can't hear, which is way more difficult to teach.

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The "th" sound is difficult for French people because this sound does not exist in their language's IPA. When French speakers try to say "the" it comes out as "zee" or "zuh." When I try to help them with this pronunciation, I show them how I place my tongue on the tip of my upper teeth while I make the sound. I exaggerate this when I show them in class and then I have them try to imitate me. Since they are younger, they find this funny, but it does end up helping some of them!

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The R sound can also be very hard for Brazilians. However, in the countryside Brazilians pronounce the R more like Americans do, so I tell my students to imitate those speakers. I find that telling them to imitate the Brazilian countryside R pronunciation is more effective than asking them to imitate an American. After all, they realize that if some Brazilians can pronounce the R sound, then in theory they can, too.

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These sounds account for the majority of my students' segmental struggles. TH is hard because there is no TH sound in Portuguese. And ED is hard because they don't always know if the correct sound is D, ID, or T.