PROBLEMS WITH PRONUNCIATION

Hi !!
which problems would you anticipate for an Italian speaker with the pronunciation of “I’ve run out of sugar ?”

Well, Italians have sometimes problems with the pronunciation of consonants at the end of a word. However that might not be an issue in the example sentence because:
a) run out is usuallly pronounced “as a word”, like ru-nout
b) you can avoid pronouncing the last “r” in “sugar”

The pronunciation of English “r” (in “run”) might in principle be a difficulty, but I don’t think it’s difficult to learn for Italian people and many are already used to it through exposure to English, so I don’t expect to get it to be much of a problem in most cases.

So, in my opinion, the biggest challenge are the two vowels that you get in “run” and the first syllable of “sugar” (both spelled “u” but of course very different in sound)
a) The vowel in “run” doesn’t exist in Italian, many speakers would replace it with an Italian “a” sound. As if you spelled it “ron” and pronounced it with an American accent.
b) Italian pronounces all “u” similarly to “oo” as in “pool”, there’s no “short u” sound. So you might expect to get the long “oo” pronunciation in “sugar” as well.

thank you ! I m working on a celta assignment and having a hard time identifying pron problems ! very helpful