Just curious, what are some examples of difficult/weird vowel or consonant sounds that you think English has? And why do you think Spanish is easy in terms of sounds?
IMO Mandarin is pretty difficult since it has both tones and weird vowels/consonants - I feel like in English most people struggling tend to only have significant trouble with articles and the "th" sound.
For example, the 'i' in 'bright' is a dipthong that sort of glides from 'uh - aye' very quickly.
Many languages have very few dipthongs -- e.g. Japanese and Spanish come to mind, and Mandarin has some, but they're mostly different from English. If you go from a language that has 5 pure vowel sounds like Spanish to something like 15-20 in English (depending on the dialect), it's hard to keep track of them all and pronounce them correctly [1], especially since English orthography hinders rather than helps you, whereas dipthongs in Spanish are pronounced exactly as they're rendered (e.g. cauda is like ca-u-da spoken fast).
Maybe theoretically Spanish has no diphthongs. But rapid speech definitely sees diphthongs develop as sounds merge together -- a very much Spanish thing.
Sure, but here Spanish orthography is actually representative of the sound, whereas English orthography is a mess (plus English has more than 5 base vowel sounds to begin with).
No matter how you cut it, English's vowel phonology is much more complicated than Spanish or Japanese. One misconception that native English speakers have is they think their language is simple to pronounce, when it really isn't.
In English in The South in the USA, often "can" and "can't" are pronounced the same ("can") with a minor difference in the way the "a" and "n" are held.
And just as badly, "can't" and "cunt" just vary the vowel length without changing the vowel or consonant sounds (in some English accents). Many languages don't use vowel length to signify changes in meaning, and it is obviously hard to teach.
This reminds me of Gough Whitlam, former Australian Prime Minister ~1975:
...Gough also took aim at Sir Winton Turbull when the rural MP shouted: 'I am a Country member'. Whitlam quickly responded with 'I remember', which earned an applause from both sides of the house.
IMO Mandarin is pretty difficult since it has both tones and weird vowels/consonants - I feel like in English most people struggling tend to only have significant trouble with articles and the "th" sound.