Peter Leyssens wrote
>
> Hey,
>
> > Spare a thought for the innocent traveller trying to get a taxi from
> > Schiphol (bad enough so far) to Hotel Huis ter Duin (yes, it gets more
> > worser) at Noordwijk aan Zee (aaargh)!
>
> Oh, you stayed there ? Fancy place, isn't it ? You weren't visiting
> ESTEC by any chance ?
>
> I don't see how Noordwijk aan Zee could be harder than Schiphol. The
> sch sound is utterly impossible to teach to foreigners. My personal
> favorite is "schuur", which just means "barn", but consists entirely of
> sounds that are unpronouncable for people with a variation of English as
> the mother tongue.
>
> One other hard thing about Dutch is that we actually have sounds that
> are *not* diphtongs ! The horror ! :-P
>
> Peter.
Ha; you think that's bad? Try pronouncing Scheveningen. (A place near/
part of s'Gravenhage).
To the native English speaker, the biggest hurdle is that in the middle of the
word you have to make a sound that feels like you are trying to clear your
throat of a particularly bothersome lump of phlegm. After a while (like a week
or two) it is not so hard, but at the beginning - a real mind blockage. All
quite
normal there.
Brian
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