Why Can't Germans Say 'Squirrel'?

"Squrrrrr … skraaaawl … squirruh … SQUOOW!"

As YouTube videos all but prove, Germans have a really hard time pronouncing "squirrel." After nailing the "squ-," chaos ensues.

In an episode of the British TV show "Top Gear," host Jeremy Clarkson jokingly suggested that asking people to pronounce the word would be a surefire way to identify undercover German spies. "No German, no matter how well they speak English, can say 'squirrel,'" Clarkson asserted.

Exceptions to the rule notwithstanding, why is the name of small, bushy tailed rodents so difficult for the Deutsche? [See video]
Carlos Gussenhoven, a phonologist — a linguist who studies the sounds used in different languages — at Radboud University in the Netherlands, believes the challenge lies in squirrel's syllable structure.

Linguists break words into clusters — groups of consonants that have no intervening vowels. In German, "-rl" is an end cluster, Gussenhoven explained. It comes at the end of a syllable, as in the common German name Karl, rather than forming a syllable of its own. Thus German speakers try to translate the two-syllable English word "squirrel" into the monosyllabic German sound "skwörl " in the same way that "squirm" becomes "skwörm." cont.http://www.livescience.com/18932-germans-squirrel.html

I know some Germans! This is going to be too funny

i can say squirrel,no problem

If they're well-advised, they'll respond "Eichkatzerl".

That was for Ani.

cherries wrote:i can say squirrel,no problem

Go on then. I dare you!

Evolving wrote:If they're well-advised, they'll respond "Eichkatzerl".

Oachkatzl.

Works too.

squirrel

Regina wrote:

Evolving wrote:If they're well-advised, they'll respond "Eichkatzerl".

Oachkatzl.

The tail of which would then be the Oachkatzlschwoaf. Try getting a German to properly pronounce that.

No English person can say "Mühe".

Well, apart from me.

And "Pfropf" seems to be a bit of a challenge too.

Try: Im Schlawwanzuch im Gaaten.

Similarly, Koreans have a hell of a time with "lizard".

I hear lizards are not terribly keen on Koreans.

the English are not too good at saying Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch either

Regina wrote:Try: Im Schlawwanzuch im Gaaten.

Nobody on this thread apart from you and me is going to understand this, but: When I was younger and a keen Catholic (a liberal one, OK? linkskatholisch) I did some Exerzitien (spiritual exercises) somewhere near Muenster or Osnabrueck or some such place, and every mass (which was very early each day) the faithful would be kneeling and at the requisite moment saying "Lamm Gottes, du nimmst hinwech..."

And I couldn't help giggling at the "hinwech".

Instead of "hinweg".

OK, I know it's not really funny.

But I couldn't help giggling.

Very inappropriate.

cherries wrote:squirrel

Pretty good. Keep practising.

Of course it's funny.
It also works the other way round. A friend of mine, who's from Düsseldorf, cannot say Kirche. It's always something like Kirsche.

Didn't know that. Thought that was just Hessen and Pfalz.

How do you pronounce China and Chemie?