Indeed, my girlfriend, a Brazilian, is teaching me Portuguese. I have real trouble pronouncing the kind of implied "m" and the end of "pão", without which, instead of meaning bread, turns out to mean penis/cock/dick. "Eu como pão" is something I have to be very careful with.

On a related note, most of speakers of East-European languages have hard time with word pairs like "bitch"/"beech" and "shit"/"sheet". Number of "spreadshits" heard at some meetings can't leave anybody cold =)

Im brazilian and I just laughed out loud on this one. Indeed, be careful with that one.

you could try associating the "m" with something like "palm", but just a little bit closer when speaking.

Ha, good one!

I've got a similar story in Spanish, which to cut a long story short, results in a foreign student trying to ask a young woman 'Cuantos años tienes?' but instead asking 'Cuantos anos tienes?'! For the Spanish speakers here, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the young woman was shocked! For the non-Spanish speakers, I'll let you look up the difference between años and anos for yourself. ;-)

In my part of the Commonwealth, 'route' does rhyme with 'hoot'. "If you go that route, you'll get stuck in traffic".

It's only in a computing context that 'router' rhymes with 'doubter'. I'd suggest female staff would likewise get the wrong idea if one pronounced it 'rooter'.

I thought the 'rowter' pronunciation re. computing was a purely American influence.

In the UK at least, router (in a computing context) _does_ rhyme with hooter. It is, after all, something that routes traffic -- exactly like your first example.

A router pronounced 'rowter', on the other hand, is a device for cutting grooves in wood.

When you use the string 'row' to describe pronunciation, are you using it in the sense of 'to row a boat', or 'to get into a row with someone'?

Americans rhyme "route" (path) with "doubt" and "row" (paddle a boat) with "dough". If you are rhyming "row" (fight) with "cow", that's a word most Americans don't know.

> Americans rhyme "route" (path) with "doubt"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYApJtsyd0

The usual distinction is "to route" rhymes with "to doubt" and the word "route" is pronounced like "root". Some people also use the verb pronunciation for the noun as well.

That distinction exists only in your own mind, and likely not even there.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/route

Contrast http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/legiti... , which correctly notes that the adjective and verb are pronounced differently.

I most often hear:

Route 66 -> sounds like root

My usual route to work -> rhymes with doubt

Can someone reset the router -> rhymes with doubter.

Turns out, we're really inconsistent! http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_26....

Router as in the hardware always rhymes with doubter. I have never heard any other pronunciation for it. Route as a verb in IT always rhymes with doubt.

In other meanings the pronunciations vary.

  > Router as in the hardware always rhymes with doubter.
  > I have never heard any other pronunciation for it.

Neither had I, until I lived in the UK.

I'm Australian, and we use the owl sounding router.

In the UK, it's very much a rooter sounding router.

Always funny, as here in AU root is slang for the act of copulation.

The pronunciation made Akamai's SureRoute product especially droll.

Sorry, I can see that was unclear.

'to get into a row with someone'

To me (US), 'route' might rhyme with 'hoot' or 'stout' according to whim. (Compare the American "Route 66".) A router would always use the MOUTH vowel, though.