hardest to pronounce

[Chuck Borsos]

There is a book by Jakobson on phonological acquisition that I read many years
ago.  If I remember the gist of his argument correctly, he thought that there
was a specific order of acquisition, bilabial stops being first, and if I
remember right certain nasalized semivowels being the last acquired (such as
represented in Czech by an r with a hacek).  In the babbling phase, the baby
made a whole range of sounds, but Jakobson contended that once real language
learning began, that this narrowed to the regular order of acquisition.  If
the language didn't have a sound, it was skipped in the learning process, but
the order remained the same.  He also thought that phonological loss from
aphasia would also follow this regularity in reverse, so that the first sounds
to be lost would be the nasalized semivowels, the very last, the bilabial
stops.  And that reacquisition following aphasia would again follow the same
order.

In this sense perhaps the hardest words to pronounce would be the ones with
the later acquired sounds.

I'm not a linguist, but in the contemporary context Jakobson's theory seems
idealistic.  Did it hold up?  Was it disproved?

Chuck Borsos
Santa Cruz, CA


> A colleague asked me what is  the hardest word to pronounce, besides _no_?
>
> Any candidates would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> David
>
> barnhart at highlands.com
>