hardest to pronounce

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:48 AM -0400 10/22/04, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>Strzelno, a small village in western Poalnd (with a beautiful
>>Romanesque church). The first syllable is /stshEl/, and epenthesis
>>is cheating. I have heard, however, slovenly local speakers say
>>/schEl/; looks like standards are slipping everywhere.
>
>dInIs
>
That one presents similar problems to the Russian word I mentioned
for "hello" (or maybe it's more like "good morning"; I guess it must
be cognate with the "Na zdorovia" toast to health), which is
something like /zdravstvyte/, where of course the /y/ is a back
unrounded vowel and the /t/ is palatalized.  I guess the theory is
that after you make it through that sort of a "good morning", the day
is all downhill from there.

larry