rewboss wrote:

Of course: it's easier for native English speakers to pronounce consonant
clusters in the middle of words.

Or, put another way: English speakers often find it impossible to pronounce
certain consonant clusters when they occur at the beginning of a word.
That's why, for example, we pronounce "xylophone" and "xenon" with /z/
instead of /ks/. However, few English speakers have problems with, say,
"pixie". It also explains why we do not pronounce the "p" in "psychology";
this "silent P" is so well established, we don't even pronounce it in
"parapsychology", even though few speakers would have problems with it. Note
also the silent "k" in "knife" (from French "canif") and "knie" (from German
"Knie", pronounced /kni:/).

When I was at university, one of the girls in my Russian class was half
Greek: her name was Xenia. I was the only one in the group who managed to
pronounce it correctly, and the situation didn't improve when we learned
words like "kstati" ("of course"). Most of the group had to use a fill-vowel
to be able to pronounce it: [k@'stAti] was the most common variation.

Interestingly, the Spanish (I'm not sure about Latin Americans) have
problems with words beginning with "sp" and "st"; no Spanish words begin
with those clusters, but "esp" and "est" are common. I remember one year
when the Spanish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest was called "Made in
Spain", and they actually made it into four syllables: "Made in Espain", the
fill vowel taking up an entire beat with a note all to itself, despite the
fact that it didn't appear in the printed lyrics.

Very interesting. Just goes to show how hard linguistic habits can be
to break.
--
John Popelish