Yeah, I remembered correctly. Scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page, to a section called “Words that begin with multiple consonants”.
Fun with Georgian:
tma (hair)
**mk’vleli ** (murderer)
**tskhviri ** (nose)
**t’k’bili ** (sweet)
**mts’vrtneli ** (trainer)
Most, if not all languages have allophonic differences between words, which means that in certain contexts a consonant may be pronounced differently from in other contexts. In English, “stops”–/b/,/g/,/d/,/p/,/k/,/t/–are usually pronounced aspirated, meaning that as they are spoken, a small puff of air escapes one’s mouth. But, when proceeded by /s/, as in spin, skin, or stop, they are not aspirated. If you hold your hand a couple of inches from your mouth and pronounce the words spin and pin, you will understand the difference. We pronounce this difference, and yet are unaware of it because it is meaningless to us.
But in Hindi, aspirated vs unaspirated stops actually mean something. I don’t know Hindi, but to illustrate hypothetically, you could have unasperated bat and aspirated b[sup]h[/sup]at, and not only would the difference be easily detectable to Hindi ears, but would imply a complete difference of meaning.
Situations like this are a big part of why it can be difficult to speak a new language, and to reduce one’s accent.
вÑтречать isn’t that really hard to pronounce, I think, especially because the в devoices to sound like an Ñ„. ткнуть is a mouthful, though, I agree.
Even then, some of these aren’t as difficult as they initially appear. Georgian has rules about the order consonants can appear in a cluster, which weeds out the truly evil combinations, and letters such as “l”, “r”, “m” and “v” can act as sonorants. So that last word you gave only has two vowels, but can be thought of as having four syllables: m-ts’vrt-ne-li.
Thanks. Your post answered my question perfectly.
… if you could only read what I’m seeing in IE 6. That Cyrillic you typed just flew apart on my end, even though I can read the Cyrillic I wrote above. What browser are you using?
No doubt that it’s not as daunting as it appears … but we have the benefit of having some linguistic training under our belts (I’m assuming this on your part). We can look at the transliterations on a page, consult a given set of rules, and then analyze what the words should sound like.
But imagine having recently emigrated to Tbilisi with not all that much formal education, and trying to pick it up the Georgian language mostly by ear, and at real-time conversational speed. This is more analogous to the situation encountered by the folks sciurophobic is referring to in the OP.
Or indeed as in the middle of “pushchair”. There’s a reasonably well-known Christmas carol with a tune by Tschaikovsky and words by Plescheev and I remember a choirmaster of mine just refusing to try to pronounce the latter name. (I may have misspelled it, for that matter, but I’d happily pronounce it any time.)
A decade or so back, the French rugby team was graced by a high-class winger of Moroccan extraction rejoicing in the surname N’tamack. Bill McLaren, the prince of rugby commentators, handled this effortlessly, but a surprising number of others had to make it “Entamack” or “Natamack” to get it out at all. (It’s not hard. Try saying “fish’n’chips”. Now say it again, but don’t say “fish”. Now say “Emil’n’tamack”. Now say it again, but don’t say “Emil”.)
Whereas the Welsh “ll” is a doddle 
Irish people have particular difficulty with words beginning with “th” since there is no corresponding sound in Irish [the letters “th” appear frequently in written Irish but they denote an aspirated T which is, in fact, silent].
My two nieces, ages 12 and 15, visited Ireland for the first time last year. Wouldn’t you know it, two separate aunts used the word “third” - pronounced “turd” - much to the amusement of the girls.
Another aunt, living in England, always had great difficulty with the word “throat”, which inevitably emerged as “troath”. Especially if she had to go to the doctor with tonsilitis. Nor could she manage the name “Timothy”.
No language is hard to pronounce for that language’s native speakers. As mentioned above, a language will have a subset of all the possible speech sounds. Not all languages will have that same subset; therefore, there will be a difference in sound inventories between languages. That is what makes one language hard for non-native speakers to enunciate. All it takes is practice, practice, and more practice to overcome that difficulty if one intends to sound like a native.