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Just needs a pronunciation guide now. British place names are impossible to pronounce even for native British English speakers because they are often not said h
by willyt 3y ago
Just needs a pronunciation guide now. British place names are impossible to pronounce even for native British English speakers because they are often not said how they are written and only people within a 15 mile radius will know the right way.
- switch007 3y agoOne place even has six silent letters at the beginning!
- willtemperley 3y agoI don't think people from that particular place, using that particular spelling consider themselves British
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- switch007 3y agoThanks, I know. Was trying to keep it light. Oh well
- willtemperley 3y agoYou managed to find the only context imaginable in which the joke didn't work!
- Shrezzing 3y agoCwmystwyth is 10 letters with no vowels.
- eigenket 3y agoNo it's not. W and y are vowels in Welsh (y can also be a consonant sometimes but I think only in words loaned from English). In Welsh the letter w stands for a sound something like the double o in the English word book.
- arethuza 3y agoI presume you are referring to Derry/Londonderry? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry/Londonderry_name_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry/Londonderry_name_dispute
- lenerdenator 3y agoThere's an event horizon that conventional wisdom slips over when dealing with many things in the British Isles. You don't pronounce the first six letters in Londonderry, four countries is the same as one country, 26 + 6 somehow equals one...
- switch007 3y agoBut you're OK with 50 states and a district being one country? Also I'm curious if you're familiar with any history of the islands of Ireland and Great Britain? If not, I recommend reading up - save you accusing any country of just being unwise, or whatever it is you are attempting to convey with "an event horizon that conventional wisdom slips over"
- ben_w 3y ago"Four countries is one country" is very different from "50 states is one country". For one, Northern Ireland is variously described as a country, province or region despite (sometimes) having its own government and semi-independent legal system. Wales has its own language and parliament, but shares a legal system (but not all laws) with England. Scotland has its own legal system and is supposed to be the equal counter-party to {England {which included Wales}} in the name "United Kingdom of …". England doesn't have an independent parliament of its own, "just" (scare-quotes needed) the one for the whole UK. The history may have led to the status quo, but it's fair and reasonable to say the status quo is bonkers.
- switch007 3y agoThis discussion reminds of when a junior joins a team on an old monolith and after 3 days claims everything a mess! It's bonkers! How can you work like this! I could rewrite this perfectly in 3 months! Is it "bonkers" if it's generating $1bn in revenue? UK GDP is $3tn :D > "Four countries is one country" is very different from "50 states is one country". I don't think you made a very compelling argument. Both are made of constituent parts. Both are "united" in various ways. States have their own constitutions, laws etc. It's messy. Fewer issues around language, I grant that.
- happymellon 3y agoThe US has the same issue, just maybe not to the same extent. Is it pronounced in English, Spanish, one of the Native American tongues? Unless you are from the US and get taught these things it's easy to get place names wrong.
- eigenket 3y agoUS pronunciation is (from the point of view of a western european) very very wild sometimes. If you ask anyone who lives closer to Paris than America how to pronounce the university of Notre Dame you're going to get a very different answer to someone who's an alumnus (something like Nodur Dayme?).
- julian_t 3y agoYep... Calais (ME) and Bryn Mawr (PA) come to mind.
- kjellsbells 3y agoNew Orleans. Nor-luns (locals) Nyoo Or-lee-uns (british) Noo Or-leh-onz (confused french people) Its confusing.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoFrench people say La Nouvelle Orleans as it is supposed to be ;)
- willtemperley 3y agoEven locals can't decide on pronunciation - Shrewsbury is pronounced as it is written unless you're posh, when it becomes Shrowsbury. https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2015/06/27/shrowsbury-or-shroosbury-the-results-are-in/ https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2015/06/27/shrowsbury-or...
- Shrezzing 3y agoBicester is another canonical example. Pronounced like "Mister" with a "B" in place of the "M". I don't think a single native English speaker would correctly pronounce Bicester on their first attempt.
- tompko 3y agoThe elision of the 'e' in -cester placenames so that the 'c' and 's' have a single sound is reasonably common e.g. Leicester, Gloucester, Worcester, Towcester, Bicester. So English natives should have a reasonable chance of getting the pronunciation of a previously unseen example correct.
- pirates 3y agoI have heard even Manchester sometimes spoken that way as well, depending on who you’re talking to.
- JdeBP 3y agoIt's not even unreasonable. -caster, -chester, and -cester are related suffixes.
- arrowsmith 3y agoAll descending from the Latin "castrum", which means "fort". So if a placename has one of those suffixes, chances are high that it was a Roman settlement.
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- arethuza 3y agoThere can also be cases where nobody in the area actually uses anything close to the "official" name - e.g. Fraserburgh being known as "The Broch" or Aberchirder as "Foggie", Gardenstown as "Gamrie"... NB Been a while since I lived in an adjacent area, things may have changed...
- ochrist 3y agoThe Netherlands have several of these, the most famous one probably being The Hague: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague#Etymology Officially (in some official documents) the name of the city is "'s-Gravenhage", but normally it's just called "Den Haag". Another similar one from The Netherlands is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'s-Hertogenbosch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'s-Hertogenbosch
- dspillett 3y agoA complaint typically mad by Americans. Amusingly the person who recently took issue with the matter in my (physical) presence came from a place in Arkansas which from then on I've deliberately pronounced ahh-can-sas. The issue is more common in countries old enough to have not made up most of their place names (or unimaginatively stolen them from elsewhere, looking at you New York, Boston, Paris, etc.!) in recent centuries, so there has been a lot more evolution (or in some cases outright replacement due to invasions & politics) in language pronunciation and/or spelling since those names were first coined, but the young whipper-snappers like the US are far from immune to the problem.
- dspillett 3y ago> Just needs a pronunciation guide now. A far from trivial task, given we can't agree on (for “can't agree on”, read “actually have arguments about”) the pronunciation of simple baked products. It is neither scone nor scone you fools. Both are wrong, and it should in fact be pronounced “scone”.
- ben_w 3y agoAnd then there are the jam/cream wars…
- lambdas 3y agoI would also like the people of Frome to stop being churlish and admit that’s not how you pronounce that combination of letters
- flir 3y agofrrrrrruuuume! (rhymes with scone).
- KineticLensman 3y ago> (rhymes with scone). For those who didn't hear the whoosh, is that the 'scoan' or 'scon' pronunciation?
- flir 3y agoBonus third choice: Stone of Scone. Pronounced like Frome ;)
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago> Just needs a pronunciation guide now The Map Men on YouTube did a short (8min) video on why pronunciation is hard and a guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4
- psunavy03 3y agoTIL Britain is like Washington State. Try getting anyone from east of the Cascades to pronounce Sequim, Snoqualmie, Snohomish, Puyallup, or Cle Elum correctly.
- Symbiote 3y agoI think there are even places with the same spelling but different pronunciations, as they're a long distance from each other.
- iam-TJ 3y agoI get a giggle every time I hear an American talk about "Fort Belvoir" because in the English Vale of Belvoir, under Belvoir Castle, it is pronounced "Beaver" not "Bel-Voir"