I had no idea that some foreign languages don’t stress one certain sylablle in each word as English does.
I heard this from a woman telling me how to pronounce her name. Say it was Rashida. I was all caught up in if it was:
Ra-SHI-da
or
RA-shi-da
and she said her language (which is suspect is Hindi) didn’t stress syllables as English does. Every syllable is the same with very mild emphasis, if any. Ra-shi-da.
This led to Wikipedia and then down many rabbit holes. For example, if you are speaking Tamil and want to ask a question, you don’t raise your pitch at the end of the sentence, you just tack on the syllable “Ah” at the end.
I did notice there were far more articles on how to pronounce English syllables and not as many informing English speakers how to pronounce other languages.
Not proud. I am as bad as any other American when it comes to communicating with other nationalities.