Tongue-Twisters

In Germany, a native English speaker has a reasonable chance of being understood by the locals, when trying to read a word or place name out of a travel guidebook or map. If one knows one's umlauts, all the better. It also helps if the word doesn't contain the letters v or w. Otherwise, the only "strange" letter is the Eszett (ß), but at least it has a simple sound.

The probability of comprehension diminishes for other Germanic languages like Icelandic or Swedish (try booking a train ticket to Växjö over the phone).

It's literally a different ball game after crossing the linguistic border into the Slavic language family. The vowel to consonant ratio drops dramatically. Just ask Krtek.

I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat

The letter r with háček (ř) is one of the more difficult letters to pronounce, and I'm told that even some native Czech speakers can't say it properly. Apparently, the Czech phrase for "three hundred and thirty three silver roofs" tests the physical limits of verbal speech.

Still, it is a Roman alphabet, and there's a small, but fighting chance of being able to say something intelligible to a patient Czech. The guidebook I have brought with me includes a map of the Moscow metro system (which seems to have very good coverage of that city). If the map didn't also have the English transliteration next to the Cyrillic station names, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

This post was brought to you by the letter Ř and the number 333.