What are the most difficult words to pronounce according to diction or consonants?

Spanish is one of the most spoken languages ​​in the world: around 600 million people use it daily. And he official language in 22 countriesespecially in Latin America.

Unlike other languages, words in Spanish are read exactly as they are written. Therefore, its pronunciation does not present great difficulties.

However, among its 93,000 words there are many that actually are difficult to pronounce and they are great for creating tongue twisters.

The most difficult words to pronounce according to diction or consonants

• KALEIDOSCOPE. A rarely used, perhaps antiquated, word which, according to the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), defines a tube enclosing two or three inclined mirrors and, at one end, two sheets of glass. Contained between the sheets are several irregularly shaped objects whose images multiply symmetrically when the object is turned by a person. Kaleidoscopic and kaleidoscopic are two derivative words that are as rare as they are difficult to pronounce.

• DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC. A word widely used in biochemistry, it is a biopolymer whose units are deoxyribonucleotides (another difficult word) and which constitutes the genetic material of cells.

• ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH. With 23 letters, it is the word at the top of the list of longest and most difficult to pronounce words in the RAE dictionary. This is the person in charge of carrying out an electroencephalogram – another word hostile to common language -, which consists of the study carried out with a graphic recorder of the electrical discharges of the cerebral cortex (the electroencephalograph).

• STERNOCLEIDOMASTOID. According to the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), it is the neck muscle, which runs from the sternum and clavicle to the mastoid process and is involved in the flexion and rotation movements of the head. The word is of Greek origin.

• HYPOTOMONSTRIQUIPEDALIOPHOBIA. Although this 33-letter word does not appear in the RAE, its meaning is rather ironic as it expresses the fear of pronouncing long, complicated words like the ones described here.

• IDIOSYNCRASY. Sometimes this word binds the tongue. Its meaning: distinctive traits, temperament or typical character of a person or community.

• METHACRYLATE. Defines one of the most used plastic materials, a product of the polymerization of acrylic acid or its derivatives. Transparent and rigid, it resists atmospheric agents.

• ENT. He is the doctor specializing in ENT, another word that is quite difficult to pronounce. In summary, the treatment of diseases affecting the ear, nose and larynx.

• OVOVIVIPAROUS. It is defined as an animal of oviparous generation, whose eggs remain for some time in the genital tract and leave the body when its embryonic development is sufficiently advanced.

• PARALLELEPIPED. Of Latin origin and widely used in geometry, this word indicates a solid element limited by six parallelograms whose opposite faces are equal and parallel.

• VENTRILOQUIST. The definition of a person who can change their voice and imitate other people’s voices or sounds can be difficult to pronounce. But not that much.

The most difficult word to pronounce in English

In many cases, the difficulty of pronouncing a word is determined by its length. A good example is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a term that does not appear in the RAE dictionary since it belongs to the English language. With 45 letters and almost impossible to pronounce, it refers to a lung disease caused by poisoning with silica dust, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Fortunately, in Spanish, this condition has a much more accessible name: silicosis.