I've only just worked out "voots"!
I was rhyming it with "boots" and it made no sense except in a Slim Gaillard way.
I have a childish chuckle at my Norwegian and Dutch colleagues with "ch" words.
Like "are you mixing any shemicals down there?"
and "They just want everything sheep! Sheep sheep sheep!"
Added to this my Dutch colleague mixes up the phrase cheapskate with scapegoat and comes up with a hybrid animal
#58 - I think this is less true of Brazilian Portuguese, which sounds quite different from European Portuguese, although I've heard lots of comments similar to yours (e.g. "Portuguese is essentially Spanish as spoken by a Russian" here, for example).
Talking about pronunciation difficulties look at this video made by some English teachers in Saudi about teaching in the Middle East and common pronunciation problems. This video is meant to be in good fun and NOT meant to insult or make fun of Arabs.
#11
That would be the uvular trill, I presume?
FYI, not all French people have the uvular trill. It is absent in many (most?) speakers in Gascoigne and the Basque Country, even if they do not speak Gascon or Basque.
Quoting *58.... Polish and Portuguese sound surprisingly similar given how distantly related they are
Interesting statement.
For me - although again, they are poles apart, Spanish and Greek sound very similar too.
For me, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese sound the same at first listen - and I learned Portuguese in Brazil.
#58 --
Polish and Portuguese sound surprisingly similar given how distantly related they are. They both contain a large frequency of sh, ch and zh sounds.
And nasal vowels.
Filius Lunae has an interesting discussion on this, with examples (video clips) comparing Russian and European Portuguese (I can see why European Portuguese sounds Slavic but not Brazilian Portuguese), and Spanish and Greek.