Worcestershire is one of the most difficult words for Americans to pronounce, research has found.

A study completed by Writing Tips has found the ten most challenging words to pronounce, according to monthly internet searches.

Worcestershire finds itself ninth on the list, with an average of 7,800 monthly searches in the US and 12,000 worldwide.

A spokesperson from Writing Tips said: “Some of the words in the list are unsurprising such as ‘Kyiv’, given that it’s topical.

“'Worcestershire' is a word that often confuses non-Brits, and 2022 saw many pronunciation social media challenges which included this word.

“Admittedly, there are far fewer syllables than you might expect with that number of letters.

“Alternatively, a word like “charcuterie” is an interesting one to see considering it’s in steady use.”

Using data from the SEO tool Ahrefs, it was found that the most searched ‘how to pronounce’ term in America in 2022 was “acai”.

According to the Meriam-Webster dictionary, this type of berry is pronounced ah-sigh-ee.

Across 2022, the average monthly search for acai was 24,000 globally, with Americans making up 18,000 of those searches.

The second most searched pronunciation was for “nguyen”, a common Vietnamese surname which was searched for 15,000 times in the US.

Some topical words made the list, including Omicron and Kyiv.

The COVID-19 variant, and 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, is pronounced oh-mih-kron and was searched for 14,000 times by Americans and 24,000 worldwide.

Kyiv, meanwhile, is the capital of Ukraine and had 13,000 global searches a month and 7,900 in the States.

Most searched pronunciations with average monthly US and global figures

  1. Acai - 18,000 - 24,000
  2. Nguyen - 15,000 - 21,000
  3. Gyro - 15,000 - 17,000
  4. Omicron - 14,000 - 24,000
  5. Charcuterie - 12,000 - 16,000
  6. Gif - 11,000 - 14,000
  7. Gnocchi - 10,000 - 13,000 
  8. Kyiv - 7,900 - 13,000
  9. Worcestershire - 7800 - 12,000
  10. Dogecoin - 7,300 - 8,500