I have a tough time saying “arbre” and “Sherbrooke” in French. For some reason, I keep choking on the “rbr” part.
When I was in high school, we hosted an Austrian student named Gerhard.
He’d pronounce it over and over, but we both finally admitted defeat and I called him George. He didn’t like it much, but it was better than Gare-heart. I just couldn’t pronounce it correctly.
To this day, I also have a problem with ennui. I learned the word early in my reading life and had no guidance. I sounded it out and came up with en-you-eye. Now that I know better, it’s still en-you-eye to me.
I announced my first rodeo this weekend, and I nailed every name but one. Some of them were really tough, too, but I could not, for the life of me, pronounce “Fagliano”. That poor kid came through my arena at least four times; I asked the other timers, and finally resorted to just calling his first name rather than mangling his last name every time.
Caricature. I tried saying it about a dozen times today while talking to a friend and I just couldn’t. I eventually just had to tell her “you know what I’m saying” and moved on with the rest of the discussion.
Never had a problem with this before. But once Bush started saying nukular, I often catch myself saying it too.
:smack: 
Since I’m interested in a lot of the films coming out later in the year, I have recently been seeing the word “biopic” everywhere and in my head always read it as rhyming with myopic. I have to always tell myself that it is “bio-pic.”
Trompe d’oleil - I think that’s how it’s spelled. Too many hampsters in my phone-modem-world to begin looking it up again.
Any help?
Trompe l’oeil. It’s pronounced something like “TROHMP loy”, where the first word is very nasal and the second word has a rising inflection, and just a hint of an “L” sound at the end.
I used to know a guy with a very long Polish name. He had to wear a custom name tag on his uniform just to make all the letters fit in the allowed space. It was one of those names that had very few vowels. When people read his name, they were usually too intimidated by it to attempt to pronounce it.
I cannot pronounce the Danish translation of strawberries and cream. If there is a Dane present who cares to give some sort of pronunciation for me, it would be most appreciated.
People in my life revel in some great names, all of which I had trouble with for a long time:
Csillaghegyi - KssILLa-GYEG-ye
Szczesny - Ssk-ezz-knee
Rezakhanlou - REZZ-a-HAAN-loo
Radziwon - RAT-chee-von
Ain’t living in a multicultural society great? 
Decatur.
La Jolla.
dehKAYtur
La Jolla? I don’t get how it could be pronounced any differently.
My town’s name (Havre) can be hard to pronounce, I suppose. It’s pronounced HAVer, but newcomers always want to pronounce it something like HAVray, in a way that makes the final `re’ make sense.
I, too, always thought `ennui’ was pronounced ENN-you-i, and when I first heard it pronounced I was at a loss to understand it for a few moments.
Polish and Vietnamese names give me fits, but I’ve never come across anyone who actually has one.
Shibboleth {Heh, heh}
Well, there’s the Spanish way (roughly “La Hoya”) or the English say-as-you-see way. I’m guessing it’s the Spanish way, but I’m a Brit so I could be wrong.
That reminds me of another one I have trouble with - the French port of Le Havre. There’s a really awkward stop between the Le and the Havre, kind of like “Luh-'Ahhv” with a hint of an “r” sound at the end. Ugh.
Polish is actually reasonably easy - it’s a phonetically unambiguous language as far as I know - once you know the rules you can tell the pronunciation exactly from the spelling. People just get scared by the “sz” and “cz” and even “szcz” letter combinations (“sh” as in shoe; “ch” as in church; and “sh-ch” as in “fresh cheese” respectively)
Colophon: Thanks for the hints with Polish consonant clusters. Having been around German speakers for portions of my life, consonants in and of themselves don’t bother me, but my gut reaction to a Polish surname was usually fear and loathing.
And I suppose this is the very first time I’ve ever seen La Jolla written out. I’ve heard it pronounced (Spanish way), but I thought the written version was a town in Missouri or northern Illinois and, therefore, French-derived, not Spanish.
(I was born in southern Illinois, and I have never spent significant amounts of time in California or, indeed, the American Southwest in general. I suppose my bias is obvious.)
When I was a kid, I couldn’t pronouce “Samantha.” So I just said ‘Mantha’
Neither my sister nor I can pronounce our cousin’s name–Rory. It comes out sounding like Woh-wee.
That’s another one. It’s the same problem I have with regularly, although particularly is worse.
Gynecological always sounds like it has an extra syllable when I say it. But it’s not like I say it all that often.
For some reason I have problems with “Desktop” . It usually comes out “desstop” unless I really take care to put the “k” in there, and then it sounds forced and odd sounding.