A French TikTok creator has set the internet abuzz with her hilarious attempts to pronounce English words, highlighting just how tricky certain sounds can be across languages.
The TikTok user, known as @tatatopsecret, is a native French speaker who’s been entertaining her followers with videos of herself repeatedly trying to say English words. Each attempt captures her growing frustration as she struggles to get the sounds just right. One of her food-themed videos, in which she battles with a particular word, has gone viral, amassing 796k likes so far.
“I really like this french girl on tiktok the only thing she does is post these videos of her trying to pronounce english words and idk she is just such a diva i love her,” one fan commented on Twitter/X.
Another joined in with, “No one could have prepared me for that Oreo pronunciation,”
Though @tatatopsecret eventually succeeded with her pronunciation — finishing with a unique take on “Oreo” — her challenges with words like “burger” have made many native English speakers appreciate just how hard it is to master certain sounds, especially the English /r/ sound.
@tatatopsecret
“Always the hard R,” noted one viewer, understanding the struggle.
Another added, “Lol love it. Have fun with R’s I’ll keep saying croissant with a hard [R],”
And then there was this honest take: “Accents are so weird to me cause like what’s preventing you from saying it right,”
It turns out the difficulty is mutual. While French speakers often wrestle with English words like “burger,” native English speakers might find themselves stumbling over “croissant” when trying to order in a Parisian bakery. (We see you, Emily in Paris fans.)
This difference is due to how each language forms the /r/ sound. In French, the /r/ sound is produced at the back of the throat, resulting in a subtle vibration. This type of sound, called a fricative consonant, is made by forcing air through a narrow space rather than fully closing it off.
On the other hand, in English, the /r/ sound comes from just behind the alveolar ridge without causing the tongue to vibrate.
Of course, the /r/ sound varies even more across other languages, and within English, some accents pronounce it differently or skip it entirely — think of rhotic versus non-rhotic accents.
One person on X summed it up well: “It’s partially physiological (your vocal chords, lips, tongue, and other speech-involved body parts are muscles and they don’t have the muscle memory required) and partially cognitive (imagine trying to read backwards or skipping every other letter),”
