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For people interested in this kind of stuff, Guy Deutscher's book "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention" is a fun rea
by Radim 9y ago
For people interested in this kind of stuff, Guy Deutscher's book "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention" is a fun read!
As is the "The History of English" podcast [0], for the more aurally inclined.
On a related note, the Great Vowel Shift [1] of the 14-16th century really fucked English over. Apparently it was a close call back then, English almost kept its "regular", conservative pronunciation ("meet", "boot" like in German), instead of the current idiosyncratic chaos.
Bizarre pronunciation of British proper names like Cholmondeley (pronounced: Chumley!), Worcester or Norwich are another one of my favourites.
[0] http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/page/10/ http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/page/10/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
- dghf 9y ago"Worcester" and "Norwich" are sort of regular, in the sense that the "ces" in "-cester" suffixes often gets elided into an "s" (e.g. "Gloucester", pronounced "Gloster") and the "w" in "-wick" and "-wich" suffixes is typically dropped completely (e.g. "Greenwich", "Warwick", "Berwick", pronounced "Grennidge", "Worick", "Berick" respectively). My mother has always insisted that "Cirencester" is correctly pronounced "Sisister", which Wikipedia sort of supports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester#Pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester#Pronunciation).
- rovek 9y agoDon't forget Southwark! (Sutherk)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TrisMcC 9y agoThat's interesting because North Berwick, South Berwick, and Berwick in southern Maine are pronounced Ber-wick.
- chrxr 9y agoSimilarly, Norwich, Connecticut is pronounced Nor-which locally.
- rdiddly 9y agoThose wacky Nutmeggers (who badly need a standard demonym by the way) also pronounce their local Thames River as thaymz and yes that's with the th as in thick. But they do pronounce Greenwich (CT) as the English do.
- richardfontana 9y agoI have read (no source at hand though) that that one used to be "Nor-itch" but during the 20th century the pronunciation was gradually forgotten and replaced with a spelling pronunciation. If I remember correctly the same was true of Warwick ("War-ick") Rhode Island.
- Radim 9y agoSame thing happened with Berkeley in the US: originally "Barclay", and still pronounced "Barclay" in the UK.
- desas 9y agoIt's common for us place names to have drifted from their origin. The Egyptian Cairo is pronounced ky-row but the American is pronounced kay-row. There's a running joke about the American pronunciation of Loughborough.
- StavrosK 9y agoGloucester makes sense if you consider that it's pronounced "Glouce-ster" rather than "Glou-cester". You wouldn't pronounce Glouce as "Glou-se", but to rhyme with "grouse".
- sjcsjc 9y agoAlso Berkeley and Berkshire are pronounced with a "bar" sound in UK English, but "burr" in the US, I believe.
- dghf 9y agoTrue; and yet the British pejorative "berk" ("fool", "idiot") rhymes with "work" but is supposedly a contraction of "Berkeley Hunt" (rhyming slang for a word much ruder than the fairly mild "berk").
- animal531 9y agoAnd of course good old Worcestershire sauce, which can be a mouthful if English isn't your first language. Where I'm from there are probably 3+ common and different ways to pronounce it.
- wccrawford 9y agoNo, it's tough no matter what your first language is, unless you've learned how the locals pronounce it. "Wuster-sher". Easy peasy.
- sdiq 9y agoWe have a few remnants of the British colonialists here in Kenya. And one such, who has since passed on but was on the news regularly was called Cholmondeley. With the exception of one newscaster, who taught us how to read the name correctly, the rest always mispronounced the name. We also have a well name office block called Warwick Center and I am yet to hear someone dropping the second 'w'. Well, I didn't know that, too, until I met a someone from 'Worick' University.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Herald_MJ 9y agoMy favourite is a small town called Towcester - pronounced like "toaster".
- loudmax 9y agoSeconding the "History of English" podcast. It's a fascinating subject.