Many have said that sorry is the hardest word but they’d be wrong, linguistically speaking at least.

很多人认为“对不起”是最难说出口的话，但是，你们都错了，至少从语言学来说。

A poll of its members found 10 words that Britons consistently find the most challenging to pronounce.

在一个投票里，英国人选出10个他们认为发音最有挑战性的单词。

The word we find hardest to pronounce is ‘phenomenon’.

最难发音的单词是“phenomenon（现象）”。

Next in the top 10 of tongue-twisters are ‘remuneration’, and ‘statistics’.

在十大饶舌单词里，紧跟着的是“remuneration（酬金）”和“statistics（统计）”。

Speakers also have a problem getting their tongue around ethnicity, hereditary and particularly, according to the body charged with recording public utterances.

根据公共话语有关人体发音的记录，说话者在说“ethnicity（种族地位）”“hereditary（遗传的）”“particularly（特别地）”这几个词时都有舌头很难转动的问题。

Completing the list are conjugal, specific, processes and development.

列表余下的单词有“conjugal（婚姻的）”“specific（特殊的）”“processes（过程）”“development（发展）”。

Leah Willersdorf, of the BIVR, said: ‘We work with many different types of professionals and hear all kinds of voices during our work.’

‘However, when it comes to the English language it always seems to be the same few words that verbally trip people up, with the speaker having to repeat the word in order to get it right, or just abandoning their attempts and moving on.’

英国某研究所专家表示“我们跟很多不同专业的人合作，听过多种声音。”

“然而，当我们研究英语时，我们发现总有几个单词人们发音时都会被它们绊倒，说话者要重复该单词以纠正发音，又或者直接不说这些单词，继续他们的话题。”

The poll of tongue twisters was in response to a query by the makers of Scrabble who say one in ten players are reluctant to use words they cannot pronounce.

University of York sociolinguistics expert Professor Paul Kerswill said the English language has evolved to compensate for tricky pronunciations but some words remain a challenge.

He said: ‘People always find a way of simplifying words that they find difficult to get their tongues round, so that an everyday word like ‘handbag’ sounds like ‘hambag’.

‘Our forebears simplified ‘waistcoat’ to ‘weskit’ – but we’ve turned our backs on that.

饶舌单词投票是由拼字游戏（Scrabble）制作者编制的，他说，十分之一玩家如果觉得这个单词难发音，他们就不愿意使用。

约克大学社会语言学专家表示，英语已经进化了一些听起来很可笑的发音的单词，但是有些单词仍然是一个挑战。

他说：“人们总会发现一些很常用的单词很难转动舌头来发音，就比如我们日常的单词‘handbag（手袋）’，听起来就像‘hambag’。”

“我们的祖先简化了‘waistcoat（马甲、背心）’成为‘weskit’，但我们却对此呲之以鼻。”