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For your next act, defend the British pronounciation of "Worcestershire".
by ergvgdvgrd 3y ago
For your next act, defend the British pronounciation of "Worcestershire".
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI don't think I can. The pronunciation of "Gloucester" (gloster) and "Leicester" (lester) follow a similar scheme for the "-cester" bit which leads to "Worcester" being pronounced "wooster", but Worcestershire sauce is often pronounced "wooster sauce" which doesn't make much sense. Apparently, Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce in England, though it certainly doesn't compare to some Welsh towns. (I say it as "froom")
- wink 3y agoI mean, Sir Terry was British after all. cf https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoIt amuses me when english words are pronounced differently to make them seem posher. We have a nearby town called Yate (rhymes with gate), but the posh version rhymes with latte.
- wingspar 3y ago“It’s pronounced Bouquet” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
- dghf 3y ago"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht', but it's pronounced 'Throat-Wobbler Mangrove'." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uv0n8 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uv0n8
- Symbiote 3y agoI think the sauce is either Worcestershire Sauce, or Worcester Sauce, either is acceptable. Worcestershire and Worcester follow the same patter as Gloucestershire/Gloucester, Leicestershire/Leicester and (Towcestershire doesn't exist)/Towcester. Towcester, incidentally, being the same pronunciation as "toaster". The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster".
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoJust found a Devon town called Woolfardisworthy, but can be pronounced as "Woolzery"
- notahacker 3y agoI like the Northamptonshire village of Cogenhoe, which is obviously pronounced cook-no. It sits on the River Nene, which is pronounced Neen or Nen depending on which bit of Northamptonshire you live in (Northamptonshire is not very big...)
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI think the accepted authority on anything to do with Northamptonshire has to be Alan Moore.
- dghf 3y ago> The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster". Or, according to my grandmother, "siss-iss-ter".
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoLocals just call it “Ciren”…
- vmilner 3y agoIt took me a surprising amount of time to work out where (Ciren) they were talking about after moving to glow-sester-shire...
- denton-scratch 3y ago> "wooster sauce" "That's just incorrect. It's pronounced "wooster-shuh". The double-O is short, as in "book". Worcestershire Sauce is sometimes simply called "woosters", as in "a dash of woosters". > Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce Hardly. It's pronounced "froom". That's not so hard.
- bee_rider 3y agoThere’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh.
- nobody9999 3y ago>There’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh. And there's a Gloucester[0] (pronounced 'Gloster' or, more likely in MA 'Glostah') there as well. And there's one[1] in Virgnia too, (Wikipedia says it's pronounced 'Gloster', but I don't know the VA accent well enough to know if that's locally correct). There are other similar place names around the US, mostly on the eastern seaboard, for obvious reasons, as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,_Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,_Massachusetts [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia
- chriswarbo 3y ago> The double-O is short, as in "book" Bad example, since some accents pronounce "book" like "kook" (not like "suck") ;)
- denton-scratch 3y agoFair do's; scousers indeed pronounce "book" as "bewk".
- mnw21cam 3y agoOne of my ambitions in life is to make a pronunciation guide using example words that are pronounced differently by different people.
- thr-nrg 3y agoYou start with a pinch of dyslexia and end with a bit of a lisp. Pretty straight forward when you imagine what it would sound like in a game of telephone between 10 5 year olds.
- happymellon 3y agoIt's due to being invaded by many different counties over the years, and each of them only invade a portion. Map men explain it best. https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4 https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
- klyrs 3y agoWhy is "Jack" short for Johnathan?
- dagw 3y agoJonathan -> John/Jan -> Jankin (adding -kin as a diminutive) -> Jack That is at least the theory I've heard
- nobody9999 3y agoLikewise, Why is 'Peggy' short for Margaret?
- pjc50 3y agoThe pronunciation is what it is. The orthography is the problem. (Many words place names long pre-date any kind of attempt to regularize English spelling, and in any case come from fusions of Brythonic, Norman, Roman, Norwegian etc languages. This is why it's difficult to predict the pronunciation of one word from the spelling of another.)
- ergvgdvgrd 3y ago100% my point. Drawing a line at the purity of "maths" over "math" is the beginning of a rock fight in a village of glass houses.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoMaybe, but 'we can't provide logical rules for names acquired over a millennium ago' seems like a poor reason to say 'therefore we shouldn't apply consistent rules to recent conventions'. Someone asked about physic ... well people used to use physick in [late medieval?] British English... but that's for what we might call medicine now.
- pessimizer 3y agoBefore the Normans, "shire" in Britain was written in Roman letters as "scr".
- BerislavLopac 3y agoOh, defending the pronounciation is easy, because the problem is not with the pronounciation at all -- it's all about English language spelling not keeping pace with the changes with the pronounciation.