If you were to do an internet search of English words that are hard to say and/or often mispronounced, you might be amazed at the results. I sure was. There are some relatively simple and common words that made the top 25 lists that I saw, such as "sixth", "choir", "colonel", "squirrel", and one I really expected to see..Worchestershire (as in sauce).
Of interest to me was that the word "squirrel" was actually used by the English in WWII during conversations with suspected German infiltrators as a trap. It seems that at the time it had a different meaning to Germans and their reaction to the word would give them away as German. As for the sauce commonly put on steaks, that poor word is hard to say to the majority of people.
Not on any of the lists that I looked at, were what many of us would consider the three hardest words to say--I am sorry. Why is saying we are sorry (sincerely and humbly saying it and meaning it) so difficult? Does offering it somehow disrupt our testosterone flow? Oh, I know, we all say we're sorry when we are caught red handed with no back door to go out of, or when, for instance, we need to show some example of contriteness to our boss or wife. I get that. The "I am sorry" I'm referring to is the one that should come the second we realize what we have just said or done is just flat out wrong, unnecessary, cutting, sarcastic, or totally spontaneously wrong for the circumstance. It is those "should immediately come" I'm sorry's that we most often neglect, perhaps with the hope that whatever we just said or did will just be quietly and quickly forgiven and forgotten. I'm sure of one thing about these words that are hard to say: as men who profess to be Christ followers, these words should not be hard to say.
Bottom Line Thought: Do you have trouble saying these words....with meaning, spoken honestly and with humility?
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