Haha I hear you. Thats actually why I’m thankful for knowing Greek. The つ and づ (hard tzu) sounds are actually part of the language and it has helped me tremendously in transitioning over to Japanese.
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Pretty much my only problem is:
Or any ん＋R sounds (しんらい、じんるい、くんれん、せんろ、けんり). I just don’t like the way it sounds. The words come out shinlai, jinlui, kunlen, senlo, and kenli. I used to avoid saying ん＋R sounds at all costs and would try to use an alternative word when possible lol. But for some reason the りゅ、りょ、and りゃ sounds are fine for me.
I do get tripped up with しちょう and like @Belthazar シチュー though.
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I personally find this a little difficult as well, but I think it’s more a mental block than anything else. The problem is that pronouncing the ん literally puts your tongue in the position for making the Japanese R and then freezes it there because you need to apply pressure to keep your tongue there for the ん. However, well, if I just persuade myself to ‘let go’ sooner, I’m pretty sure it can be done. EDIT: just listened to a few recordings and… maybe the problem is that you’re expecting a trilled R (that’s what the Spanish and Greek Rs are like, right?) whereas the Japanese R is something in between a trilled R and the letter D in English. (The exact pronunciation depends on region and mood, I guess.) In any case, I know I have a hard time pronouncing 便利 if I try to curl my tongue upwards in preparation for the R. On the other hand, if I just let it come off my upper front teeth, the sound comes out fine.
Another sound I probably don’t pay enough attention to is ふ. It’s not hard to make, but I need to remind myself not to let my lips touch. Honestly, a lot of Japanese people seem to pronounce it more like ‘hoo’ than ‘foo’, which is a clue to how it ought to sound.
These two sounds aside, I don’t think Japanese has many hard-to-replicate sounds though. Pitch accent and proper intonation overall are more difficult to produce.
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Can you give some examples? 
When we say water it sounds like wahder.
Bottle sounds like boddle.
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Yeah I definitely had to learn to break out of my rolled r because of my Greek background. It’s not a problem when r sounds are isolated. But in combination with ん the rolled r wants to slip its way in haha
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The funny thing is that I read a post on some forum about 2 years ago based on a conversation between a Spanish speaker and a Japanese speaker, and they apparently concluded that the Japanese R and the Spanish R are the same thing? I’m somewhat inclined to believe that because you actually hear rolled Rs a lot in anime for example, especially when you’re dealing with ‘tough guy’ characters with regional accents. I guess the truth is that the Japanese R is only slightly different… maybe it’s just a bit lighter? There’s a difference in Spanish between the ‘rr’ sound (rolled strongly) and the ‘r’ sound (tapped lightly). I don’t know if the same thing exists in Greek, but I feel the Japanese R is probably closer to the tapped R in Spanish, like in the “pero” (=‘but’).
As far as the ry- sounds are concerned, maybe I have an easier time with them since I’m used to diphthongs and ‘sliding’ from one vowel to another as an English speaker, whereas a lot of continental European languages are syllable-timed, so each syllable is pronounced for the same amount of time. However, well… I tend to just think of them as a sort of quick ‘ri’ followed immediately by a vowel. Not sure if that’s helpful. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice.
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Or we simply omit the sound altogether (words like button for example. Teaching my Japanese students to say that word in a natural way was hard… this was for an advanced speaking class not a regular English class BTW. I’m not THAT mean).
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For me I’ve heard and spoken Japanese pretty much my whole life so the individual sounds are natural for me to make. However, my ability to speak or read aloud at speed is poor so sounds that merge or blend together are difficult for me and I need to practice saying phrases repeatedly for it to sound right (or close to right at the very least).
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あたたかくなくならなくなかった
Ah first just あたたかかった was tough.
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The most recent word that is difficult to pronounce for me is 潤う（うるおう)
When i first saw it i was like: “how is this even pronouncable??” lmao
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What about that word is hard to pronounce? If you explain maybe someone can help.
I am pretty ok with pronunciating stuff. Knowing Albanian and Italian on top of English really helps, because I feel like I already know so many crazy sounds 
So Japanese phonetics is a walk in the park, in that respect.
The only thing I struggle is pitch accent and trying to say whole sentences naturally without sounding like a robot. That’ll take me some hard work and lots of time spent practicing 
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Greek doesn’t have as strong of a rolled r as Spanish does. I would say it’s like… somewhere between Japanese and Spanish haha. It’s just that Japanese has a softer roll which I have no muscle memory of and it becomes a challenge when an ん gets thrown in the mix. The n makes it feel like I need to apply more pressure and it ends up rolling haha
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I guess it feels like the る makes it harder to properly pronounce the おう bit for me, it kinda just sounds like おお when I try to say it
I studied Japanese phonetics and we sent over which parts of the mouth make which sounds, which was really nice. I have trouble remembering to actually make them correctly though.
The one I am worst about remembering is probably ふ. I’m trying to train myself to say it properly by shadowing Tofu chan’s name.
I can’t find a proper pronunciation chart, sorry, so I don’t want to give a bad/difficult explanation of how to make it. 
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I can do the んら、んり、んりょ、んろ sounds, んえ sound, elongated vowel sounds (えい、おう、vowel + ー), pretty much most of the difficult sounds…
But the だ、で、ど sounds… I still can’t seem to get them right. Out of all words in a sentence, my です sounds weird as heck to me when I hear myself pronounce it again.
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ベッド。
Have you guys ever tried to pronounce that word? It’s much more natural to say ベット instead of forcing the ど。
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I’ve had this conversation with my wife after hearing her say it previously. Asked her about it again a second ago and she says that you can hear people say せんえん with the ん being pronounced with the back of the tongue (almost sounds like the throaty G sound), the usual ん sound where the two kanji are separated せん and えん, and then the way she pronounces it, which sounds like a Y is being thrown in the middle. like せんぃえん.
Makes me wonder if this has anything to do with why we call it the “Japanese Yen” instead of the Japanese En.
If I had to guess though, that probably is also why stuff like 全員 is often pronounced ぜいいん. Rolls off the tongue easier.
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This is how I pronounce it these days as well, not that that means much.
It does not. From Wikipedia:
The spelling and pronunciation “yen” is standard in English because when Japan was first encountered by Europeans around the 16th century, Japanese /e/ (え) and /we/ (ゑ) both had been pronounced [je] and Portuguese missionaries had spelled them “ye”.
I think there’s still a slight ん sound in there, but almost unnoticeable.
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They’re called taps or flaps! I find them super interesting, and there’s a rule for them, too! If the first syllable is stressed and the second syllable starts with a T or a D, they tend to become taps. I have a hard time trying to emphasize the T or D sound when I’m trying to teach my students how to pronounce a new word like that… XD. and an article I was reading for a phonetics class actually said that the tap is actually pretty close in production to japanese r-sounds which I think is so cool!
(sorry for geeking out)
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