[OT] American versus British spelling and pronunciation

[Nick Sabalausky]

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message 
news:mailman.270.1331248862.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 10:29:05PM +0000, Stewart Gordon wrote:
>> On 08/03/2012 19:29, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> <snip>
>> >Another thing is, I can't roll my R's. My tongue as stiff as a stick
>> >and just refuses to roll anything, no matter how hard I try.
>> <snip>
>>
>> I can't roll my tongue either.  I'm told it's genetic. :)
>>
>> But anyway, to me, rolling Rs seems pretentious....
> [...]
>
> Well, it's pretentious in English, but quite mellifluous in Russian. :-)
> Though I'm told that even for native Russian speakers, it's one of the
> last sounds acquired, so it must be pretty difficult. (And to make
> things worse, they have *two* rolled R's, one palatized, one not. As if
> one R isn't hard enough already.)
>

R in general is a very difficult sound no matter what variation of R. In 
native English countries, R is one of the most (if not the most) common 
sounds for kids to have touble with.