On Tue, 26 Jan 2016 08:38:43 +0100, clipka wrote:

>> True, then again, you could always try something like Gaelic.
> 
> Well... I /vaguely/ recall having mention Irish ;)

Which is not quite the same as Gaelic - or rather, Gaelic languages (6 
living langauges, a few mixed, and a few nearly dead languages - I know 
someone who's one of about 5 people in the world who speak one particular 
dialect - in Scotland).

Welsh actually is one of those languages, as is Irish.  Breton, Scotish 
Gaelic, Cornish, and Manx are the other living languages.

I can't tell you how many people mispronounce my cats' names - which are 
Manx Gaelic (and actually, relatively simple names to pronounce).

>> Or for a challenge, try a non-Romanized language; Russian, Polish,
>> Hungarian (is quite interesting), Japanese, Chinese, or another similar
>> language. :)
> 
> I think aside from Chinese (for rather obvious reasons) neither of them
> can cope with Irish when it comes to leaving the reader puzzled as to
> how an unfamiliar written word is spoken or vice versa, even when said
> reader is well-versed in the script(*) used.

Arguably, English itself has some oddities that make pronunciation 
difficult for non-native speakers to use.

For example, the made-up word 'ghoti' is often used to describe the 
idiosyncrasies of English pronunciation.  (The actual pronunciation of 
that made-up word is "fish" - gh from 'tough', o from 'women', ti from 
'nation').

> That's because Irish is exceptionally unconventional in how it uses the
> latin script to render the language's phonemes.

Another that strikes me as in a similar class is Catalan - though a fair 
amount of the 'misunderstanding' of Catalan vs. European Spanish is less 
a lack of understanding based on mispronunciation and more what some 
might just term as 'dickishness'. :)

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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