Why are British place names SO hard to pronounce? as explained by Map Men | Reaction
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ต.ค. 2023
- Map Men explain why places in the UK are so hard to pronounce. Drop the hardest place to pronounce that you know down below. How are you pronouncing Qatar?
Original Video: • Why are British place ...
Jay Foreman channel: / @jayforeman
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"He laughed, he laughed....He laughed way more than i think was necessary". LMAO
Oops rocky start to Anglo-US relations!?!
How many people missed the joke about "just who were the complete anchors who invented these rules" ... - as in silent "w"
Derrrr......hilarious.
Not many Brits would have missed it
@@tinaunderhill5412 which is why these two are as funny as shingles.
@@johnnyhmash 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
Jeez, so much hate.
@@johnnyhmash
8:30 I love how she immediately latches on to "Portishead!!!"
...and right there she reveals her excellent taste in music.
There's a lot of fantastic Jay Foreman videos that are informative and very funny!
If this video is any indication, I’ll have to check out more!
@@NoProtocolthey’re all gold. He had a great couple of appearances on Evan Edinger’s channel as well: one on British vs American TV and that segues into the second on a comparison of Adverts
@@vaudevillian7but which it, are than goodest of most?
I've always avoided Map Men because their intro is annoying af. I know, my tolerance is very low.
@@NoProtocol Serendipitously, you have discovered a veritable Treasure Trove of English wit and banter with Jay(who has over 1 million Subs for a reason) and Mark. These Guys are hilarious but the jokes and humour come so fast, that it is easy to miss some. Amongst their many excellent videos are many about London and if you put " Map Men: London" in the TH-cam search engine then take your pick whether it is about London's 32 Boroughs or Borders or the Tube Map with its 272 Stations plus endless others. Enjoy.
The 'er' -v- 'ar' thing in Derby is a result of the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) that happened between about 1350 and 1700. Certain vowel sounds drifted higher in the mouth. But, at a time when few people could write, some place names (Derby, Hertfordshire) and occupations (clerk) were so well established that no-one thought to change them just because the pronunciation of newer words did. 'Er' was pronounced 'ar' - Chaucer has Absalom in The Miller's Tale kiss someone's 'ers'. But nothing is clear-cut and there are exceptions.
Also borough, burgh, brough, bury, etc., are all from -burȝ or -burh, meaning a walled settlement. Original pronunciation was with a guttural g.
All of Jay Foreman's videos for the last few years are amazing. Very nerdy.
I’m here for it
Plus all the videos of his friends and friends of friends (Tom Scott, Matt Parker, Steve Mold, Hannah Fry, ...).
Btw. Jay Foreman's brother is famous beat boxer Beardyman. I recommend the video "Stand-up comedy routine about bad science" by Steve Mold where he recites an evening with Beardyman's in-laws.
8:05 - Yes, "Woostersher" is a correct pronunciation. But, just for the sauce, a lot of people just say "Wooster" sauce.
I'd say it's more of a "wuhstersher".
Woost has a bit of a "whoo" sound to it.
not in massacuetts the citiy is spelled the same but it is said with an i. wister instead worcheter
@@mr.pearly7478 Correct. Even many English people fail to get this pronunciation.
Id just say wuster sauce. Wustersher if being less lazy.
There's an American youtuber who cooks and he uses washyoursister sauce lol
Regarding the Norse suffixes (e.g., by in Grimsby), many of them are still very easy to understand for modern Scandinavians. "By" is still used in all the Scandinavian languages. It means village in Swedish and town/city in Danish and Norwegian. "Beck" (e.g. Holbeck) means stream, and in Sweden "bäck" still refers to smaller streams. "Kirk" means church (Swe: kyrka, Dn/No: kirke). "Thorpe" means smaller house or secondary settlement ("torp" in all contemporary Scandinavian languages). Etc.
we have lots of 'Thorpes' in Norfolk such as Swainsthorpe or Baconsthorpe castle and a Thorpe area and railway station in Norwich.
@@rogerblackwell I was kinda stunned when I first saw this video that you could see a clear divide between Viking place names in Norfolk and Anglo Saxon place names in Suffolk. That had never really crossed my mind before.
@@rogerblackwell Cognate with "dorf" or "dorp" in German and Dutch.
That's true, greetings from Tyskland.
I know a guy whose last name is deadass Torp-Kirkeby 💀
Spanish is precisely one of the easiest language to read correctly. Nearly every letter has a single pronunciation, with very few exceptions, and the rules always work. So if you know the rules (there aren't many) you will know how to read it 100%.
Unsurprisingly, German is apparently the easiest language for the English to learn and pronounce (from what I was told in German lessons) 😊
Finnish has completely phonetic writing. So it's pretty easy too.
😂 Italian too.Each syllable.
Wilson was one of the Angry Young Man group.
Welsh is like that - but I will say that I can understand why someone who didn't grow up with it might find it difficult, especially if your first language is English because there are sounds in there that just don't exist in the vast majority of English dialects and the mutation rule can be a little tricky to get your head around.
Glad you’ve discovered Map Men and Jay Foreman. Some fantastic videos on the Tube.
Fantastic reaction, your comments were really interesting and I have followed Jay Foremans channel for years now, he has a ton of informative videos and they are funny too! Keep up the good work!
I mean I’m decent with Old English, and Old Norse I love the etymology of place names in England. I always like to talk about the major cities. My favorite is probably York. It was called Eoferwīċ(e͜overwiːtʃ) in Old English, and Jórvík(jorwiːk) in Old Norse. In both languages the name literally translates to Boar-Bay. Anyway how did we go from those to York? The w in Old English is usually cognate with the v in Old Norse. The Northumbrian dialect of Old English changes the eo diphthong to io, so the local Northumbrian population probably called it something like Ioferwīc(i͜uverwiːk). At some point through a mix of the languages the common name became something like Iorc/Ierc, or Jórk for the Danish population sounding basically like how it sounds in Modern English but with a trilled r. In Middle English it started diverging a bit with Yerk, then Early Modern English Yarke. I presume locals probably held on to pronouncing it as “york,” and it’s lasted until today but of course English lost its rhoticity.
English lost its rhoticity? Not everywhere.
@@binxbolling I meant to say that English stopped trilling the r, so I guess it has become less rhotic? I’m not sure if there’s another word for it. I can’t even find a consistent definition of “rhoticity” tbf.
@@JMagician. I think it refers to pronouncing R especially at the end of words like runner, dinner, etc. Standard American English is rhotic. Standard British English is not.
The Celtic name was eburos -“yew-tree”. There was a misunderstanding somewhere along the way. It's also interesting that New Amsterdam became New York and not New London.
A few close to home: Trottiscliffe, the sings were changed to how it was said Trosley ('s' pronounced like a 'z'), and then changed back again.
A set of small villages called whiteball, redball and apparently another one, all are basically small hills with predominantly one kind of tree on them. Quite close together.
Then there is the odd 'perntorfell' hill. 'pen' 'tor' 'fell' and 'hill' all mean the same thing. 'Hill'.
Trottiscliffe: That area of Kent seems to keen on strange pronunciations. Meopham and Wrotham also spring to mind.
not far from where I live, in Yorkshire, is a village named Appletreewick - pronounced Aptrick by the locals
Map Men is an excellent channel. They're really funny, though some people might not immediately get their humour.
I also had a mispronunciation experience in New York, although to be fair I was 12 at the time. I asked someone, either a railway employee or a cop, how to get from Manhattan to Syosset but I said "Sigh-Oh-Set". He just said "Sigh-Oss-it?" and then told me how to get there :)
The weird thing with Worcestershire (woostersheer) sauce is that most people just call it "Wooster sauce", missing the "shire" out completely!
It’s more like wustershuh
@@Oxley016It depends where you're from. I'm from the Black Country and pronounce the county names as
"- - - sheer".
Some people may not get the humour because....there's none there!
Im very glad you found this; I really like their channel. Their style of comedy is also great!
I also enjoy looking into history etymology and semantics. Quite happy to have come across your reaction. Also even he ate and bled he mentioned when the vowels began to shift, he was referring to the ‘great vowel shift’ that may be something you enjoy looking into.
Loved your narration. We had our home in Llanfair P.G. for 30 years.
Nice video and your willingness to learn. Respect to you.
love your reactions 👍🤓. much respect Birmingham UK 🇬🇧.
first time watching your videos - really liked this one!
0:14 Leominster is 'LEMSTER', Bicester is 'BISTER', Godmanchester is 'GUMSTER' (traditionally), Loughborough is 'LUFFBURRA', and Keighley is 'KEETHLEE'.
More examples - Ulgham is 'UFFAM', Happisburgh is 'HAYZBURRA', Milngavie is 'MULGUY', Barnoldswick is 'BARLICK', and Woolfardisworthy is 'WOOLZERY'.
Examples local to me in North East England - Finchale is 'FINKLE', Houghall is 'HOFFLE', Prudhoe is 'PRUDDA', Cambois is 'CAMMUS', and Ireshopeburn is 'EYES-UP-BURN'.
And remember, Luxury-yacht is pronounced Throat-warbler-mangrove! (Actually, 'yacht' itself is a weird word. The Internet tells me its from Middle Low German. But why did we carry over the 'ch' in the middle if we didn't intend to pronounce it?)
I grew up near Cogenhoe which is pronounced COOK-NO :)
And here I've been pronouncing Loughborough "LuffBuruff" all my life ... not really, but it should be pronounced that way
@@matthewwalker5430There was a famous case of an American tourist asking for directions to LOOGA-bo-ROOGA
"Godmanchester is 'GUMSTER' (traditionally)"
No it isn't. "Gumster" was an informal name derived from it's ancient name, Gumcestre. It is NOT, and never was, a pronunciation of Godmanchester, traditional or otherwise.
Unfortunately the reach of the countless articles on "weirdly pronounced UK place names" which repeat this erroneous factoid is far greater than that of the people who simply live there, and have done for generations, and know it to be complete nonsense.
YES!!! As a Brit, I’ve been known to embarrass myself when pronouncing American place names/street names/peoples’ names. As for Australian place names? That’s just taking the piss.
Edit: 8:05 Wuss-terr-shear.
yeah well the blackfellas are *probably* the oldest surviving culture on the earth .. I think? so placenames derived from them, Im not sure its even possible to say them by the noob whitefellas wed have to grow a different set of vocal cords maybe?
@@markhill3858 You make an extremely valid point. Not my intention to offend, but good Lord I made a laughing stock of myself in Oz.
@@Mike-rw2nh thats ok we like a laugh :)
@@Mike-rw2nh and we do pride ourselves on being the MOST foul mouthed lot of mongrels in history, tho the Irish are pretty solid competition .. so we arent too easy to offend .. my own mum would be banned from yank TV I am sure :)
@@markhill3858 alongside the place names, my Aussie mates had much merriment warning me about the dreaded Greatwhitesaltwaterfunnelwebbedboxjellyfishdingobrownsnake. Fun people, beautiful place - evil sense of humour 🤣
PS. Susie Dent's books on various strands of etymology are a fun read. She also does daily etymology on the twitters.
I haven’t heard of her yet, will look it up! Thank you
Susie is a regular on the words and numbers quiz Countdown, and also it's comedy version, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, which is hosted by Jimmy Carr.
Suzie has been on TV for decades now. Her Twitter game is unparalleled, with commentary on the latest mishaps given in the form of a 'word of the day'.
There’s a village near me in northern England called Torpenhow, which is pronounced locally as “Tra-pen-a”.
Oddly the name is made up of three ancient words all meaning hill, so can be translated to modern English to have a meaning of “Hilly-Hill-Hill”.
Apparently each group of settlers who took over the area added their word for hill onto the existing place name to describe the area as being hilly 😂
And how hilly is it really? 😉 😉
Torpenhow is about 20 minutes from me, not often I see someone online from around the area.
@@annasaddiction5129 not as hilly as the name suggests 😂 it's not flat land, lots of undulating hills around that village, but not far to the east it becomes very hilly and mountainous.
Absolute nonsense…Hilly hill hill….Drunk were you, when you wrote that?
@@DerekLangdon Its etymology is Old English torr, Celtic penn, and Old English hoh meaning hilly hill hill
So glad you're reacting to map men / Jay Foreman. 😊
For some reason what interests me about place name pronunciation is when two places spelled exactly the same are pronounced differently, but by stress. Newark, NJ and Newark, Del. are a good example.
Newark, NJ is stressed on the first syllable, which almost makes the ark sound like erk. Newark, Del. is stressed on the second syllable, almost like you're asking a question. New ark? The second syllable is very clearly ark.
And those cities aren't that far apart.
Newark, UK is pronounced "new-work" (like Newark, NJ) as it was a new town compared to the "old work" of the castle that preceded it. It has nothing to do with Arks, so I don't know what Delaware is thinking.
Apart from the obvious Edinburgh one you already mentioned another that instantly comes to mind for me is from a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland called Milngavie. You pronounce it Mull-guy.
Also on a side note all our train stations have the names in Scottish Gaelic as well so if I ever find myself bored on a long train journey I can try to pronounce those. (for example the gaelic for Milngavie is Muileann-Ghaidh)
Strathaven.
@@AzulinhoAzulinho Pronounced Straven.
The Gaidhlig pronunciation being Mull-eann-Ghavee.
@@AzulinhoAzulinho Strathaven being an English bastardisation of Srath Aibhne, or in Scot’s Straiven, pronounced in Gaidhlig Sraath Aveen. Meaning the valley of the Avon which derives from the old Welsh for river Afon, this area of Scotland originally inhabited by Britons (Welsh).
Hello from East Yorkshire in the UK 👋😃
Great reaction video, always refreshing to see some well presented positive fun content.
There's a small market town in East Yorkshire called Market Weighton.
The 'Weight' in Weighton is pronounced 'Weet'
"Market Weeton" Non locals often stumble on this one, but it doesn't help that locally, the town is also referred to by it's old name, "Wicston", meaning dwelling or dwelling place.
Take care 😁
Yay! My home town was the first example Go Frome!
Greetings from Scotland! YES, I can confirm (I was born in South Wales) that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch really IS a place in North Wales, Anglesey! It translates (loosely) as "St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave" more or less.
Nobody actually says the full name though, it goes by Llanfair PG.
Welsh is more than a little quirky for non Welsh speakers because it has things like - NO letter V for instance. However, it does have the "sound" V or VEE. How? Well we use a single letter F as a VEE sound and two FF's as an F or EFF sound! It gets a lot worse for non speakers, like one single L is said and sounds like L but we also use two L's together (e.g. Llan, which means church) and there is no way I can type that sound, you need to hear it said. Anyway, you get the sort of idea........ Great language to speak behind the back of non-Welsh speakers, and YES, they do that too.......... Because I have lived in Northern Scotland for 50 years, when I go back home, some people think I and not Welsh and I have great fun letting them babble on before I speak to them in Welsh! 😂 I know, it's sick, but such fun, how can I NOT do it! 😊
It is on Anglesey. It is on the south coast of the island near the Menai Bridge.
Yep I was instantly thinking if you want hard try welsh place names, and that's coming from a Welsh man.
@@reaperuk76 Yeah, as a kid I had a laugh with many tourists trying/failing to pronounce local names. The next village to us was called "Bwlch" - that came out in all sorts of hilarious ways, sounding like they were being sick! The village after that was "Llangynidr" - oh my god! that almost caused convulsions! 😂😂 Such good memories of laughing myself to tears!
First time here. Struggled to keep up, your beauty bedazzled me. True.
there's a ton of local place names that are destined to be mispronounced. there are a lot of places called 'Hulme' (the L is silent) and a place not too far away called 'Levenshulme'. the fun I've had with people getting it wrong is a lot! (commonwealth games in 2002 and a very frustrated bus driver trying to direct tourists to hotels not in the city centre because 'bus drivers know where everything is')
I've heard it called 'Lee-ven-shull-me', 'leven-shoolm'. it's almost painful sometimes, but, it is 'leh-vehns-Hyoom' (phontic)
but there are a ton of places that make Levenshulme' look easy.
it would be different if I went to the states and decided to call it 'Ah-mur-Ree-kay'.
Okay, any jay foreman music video is an amazing experience of silly dry humor 😂
That aside, every written thing in map men videos has a few gags in it. Worthy to pause and read
Two towns near my dear old mum spring immediately to mind. Happisburgh and Stiffkey, which are of course pronounced 'Haysbra' and 'Stewkey'!
Seen this before, but it's a fun one. Good effort at trying the names and quite brave. For the sauce, I (and most people I know) am lazy and call it merely 'worcester sauce' (pron: wooster sauce) I thought Qatar was pronounced as Kay-tar.
Not sure about accents in English place names (we may have a couple but they elude me for th emoment), but do you know the one that ends with an exclamation point (!)?
8:28 ......I was born in Leicester (Lesstuh), and now live in Woburn, (Woebun) which is situated somewhere in the middle of Bicester (Bisstuh), Towcester (Toestuh) and Flitwick (Flittik).
Keighley, where my Dad was born. A market and mill town in West Yorkshire pronounced “Keithlee”. Drayton Beauchamp (Beecham), Chesham Bois (Boys), Lymm,
Chesham Bois is pronounced Boys if you don't live there and Bwah if you do (and you're a posh snob)
I'm from the UK. Specifically I'm from a county in England called Berkshire which is pronounced "Bark-sheer"
As a northerner, I'd argue it's pronounced Bark-shuh, which adds a whole new layer of complication for foreigners trying to get to grips with this!
@@GarrySturley-vq1ir lol yeah depends on where in the UK you're from
There's a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, as well as a few streets, and a small town in South Australia called Cockburn. For some reason the 'ck' is silent, so it's pronounced co-burn, with the vowels slightly clipped.
We have a couple of local names that we can use to spot the non local. "Irsta" and "Skerike" are small villages outside of the larger city of Västerås. Pronounced of course as something similar to "Ischta" and "Shärke".
In West Yorkshire, we have the famous village the Bronte sisters came from Haworth, which is pronounced. Howath. Also very close by is Keighley pronounced Keithley
Just to clarify Howarth is pronounced How-arth (Not Ho-warth).
@grahamholmes9630 Not in Bradford it's not.
Hunstanton is pronounced Hunston for some reason. A bit like the surname Featherstone-Haugh being pronounced Fanshaw.
The first place that came to mind was Gloucester, Massachusetts, but that's not fair because it was named after the city in England (pronounced here as Glahster), so let's go with Cairo, NY; pronounced as the American- English word "care" with an "oh" at the end (CAIR-o). Greenwich, Connecticut is another good one, pronounced Grenich, but again, it's the British influence. I guess Boise works too. OMG, there are a lot.
In the very south-east of England, names begin to shift again, especially in the smaller place-names.
- hurst meaning 'clearing in the woods', for example.
Love your channel ❤❤❤
If you're interested in some historical linguistics, I recommend two Rob Words videos : "How anyone (including YOU) can read German" and "How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)", and after these two, one video from Jackson Crawford (which might not be suitable for a reaction video) "Grimm's Law and the Regularity of Sound Changes". (Edit : I'm adding "Corresponding Cognates" by Simon Roper, pretty good one too, although it might also not be suitable for a reaction video. I like Simon's videos, but he often uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, which makes his videos harder to follow for the uninitiated, but I just discovered this one which barely uses any IPA.)
I think those videos are a good introduction to the concept of regular sound changes, as well as other concepts in historical linguistics.
Yes or anything by Dr Geoff Lindsey
@@barneylaurance1865 He's more on the phonetics side than the historical linguistics side, but yes.
There's a place near(ish) to Glasgow called Milngavie, pronounced 'mull-guy'.
One of our favourite seaside towns when I was growing up, is Happisburgh. Tourists had no idea that the name is pronounced, Hazebrrr
The Map Men are worth checking out as all their videos are good.
I can recommend all of the Map Men video's.
Interesting that you've got a friend in Derbyshire which is my neck of the woods! If you ever come over to visit them then I'd be happy to give you some recommendations of interesting places to visit in the area!
“Is there a cow in Moscow?” By Charles Harrington Elster is one of my favorite books of pronunciation and grammar, it was a recommended book in a college course.
I only discovered Towcester as "Toaster" when I heard it on the radio a couple of months ago. I'm born and raised in the UK and I still get a lot of these awkward places names incorrect 😂
Magdalen College, Oxford is pronounced, maudlin. Sometimes we just do these things to mess with everybody. I like the way everyone on the news started pronouncung Kyiv differently after the invasion, even though it's apparently no closer to the Ukranian pronuciation.
Cambridge also has a Magdalene College. It is pronounced the same, but has an e on the end.
Apparently Lodz in Poland is pronounced something like "Woodge." I gather that the first letter is not really an L, but has a line drawn through it, hence the different pronunciation.
@@andrewtaylor5984 Back in 1972 I arranged to meet a friend from Luton, who was studying at Cambridge, in Magdalen Street, Norwich. He said to meet at 'Maudling' Street and I spent half a day looking for a non existent 'Maudling' Street. We almost never met!
The very best way to learn how to say British placenames is to listen to the classified football results at 5pm on a Saturday. You'll hear how to pronounce over a hundred British towns and cities in minutes along side seeing them on screen. There are some old ones on YT if you want to do a video on it. th-cam.com/video/QktMvtILlQs/w-d-xo.html
As someone with a standard English South African accent I'd say i sound like a mix between British and American pronunciation. I would say 'Darbyshire' exactly like an american bar the rhotic R's.
I love this sort of stuff. For example the word 'bedlam' comes from accented mispronunciation of the Royal Insane Asylum in Bethlehem. How neat is that. Also, subbed.
USA, Arkansas. It is apparently still illegal to pronounce it Ar-Kansas.
Here are a few to have a go at:
Bicester = Bis'ter,
Abercynon = Abba'cun'on,
Fowey = Foy,
Cholmondeley = Chum'lee,
Ruislip = Rye'slip,
Beaulieu = Bew'lee,
Hereford = Herri'fud,
Leominster = Lem'ster,
Gloucester = Glos'stir,
Worcester = Wus'stir.
There are many more, but these are a start.
That last one is only because English people really struggle pronouncing the letter 'R' - unless it's a phantom/fantasy 'R' in between a word that ends with a vowel sound and the next word that starts with a vowel sound. Like Law(r) and order. How we rhotic speakers laugh at your idiocy.
For clarity, I would pronounce it as Wurs'stir. You would hear the 'R'.
@@AzulinhoAzulinho That's fair comment.
Abercynon is phonetic. No problems with pronunciation IF you know the rules of Welsh pronunciation.
@@martinhughes2549 👋👋👋 aye, I wasn't certain enough, but well said. These typical English ignoramuses, the y think they know Cymru and Alba but they know F all.
In the north of England there’s a town spelled Irishopeburn but pronounced I-sop-burn tricks a lot of people
Near me is a town called Slaithwaite, pronounced 'Slow-it' (ow like in power)
You might enjoy The Chaos Poem by Gerard Nolst Trenité. There are a few videos of it.
In the USA you have the Koch ( Coke ) brothers, but here in Australia we have a morning show presenter called David Koch ( Kosh ). Even names can't escape their expected pronunciations...
That's just two different, self-conscious attempts to avoid the correct pronunciation, "Cock". Just watch English-speakers squirm as they deliberately mispronounce that other notorious German surname, Fuchs.
I wonder if they came from different parts of Germany. CH gets pronounced differently in different dialects.
I've lived in Triangle, Sowerby Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Luddenden Foot.
I used to think they were strange names but the more I travel, the more I think they're pretty tame.
Mytholmroyd is a mouth full
Well know I know what to name my kid if I have one!
Mytholmroyd Martinez 😈
Many happy times in Hebden Bridge with an old mate, Ian Davies from Mytholmroyd. Beautiful part of the country. And this coming from a Lancastrian.
@NoProtocol Close to that there is a place called Slaithwaite pronounced Sloughit.
Loughborough, north-east of Birmingham is one name that catches out a lot of people outside of the UK.
I've been to NewYorkshire and there's a place called Poughkeepsie.
I love Map Men!
If you enjoy etymology, I highly encourage you to check out Simon Roper. He has an invitingly easy pace, enjoyable narration, and he’s very thorough with what he does! He has a couple videos where he acts as an Old English speaker living in the modern day, but all his videos are fascinating!
I pronounce Worcestershire as "wooster-sher" (where the "oo" sounds like the "oo" in "book" or "foot", but that was only after being corrected by someone from the UK. Growing up, my mom always pronounced it "werster".
I always watch your videos till the very last second, where you shoot me with your wink 😊
Auchterarder, Auchtermuchty, Achiltibuie, Hawick, Milngavie........all in Scotland and all trickier than Frome
I'm from Sheffield and we have an area near us called Penistone... which is luckily pronounced "penn-iss-tunn", but it does get a pretty good laugh from visitors.
Not far from Slaithwaite…
Sounds like false advertising to me. Many a hen party has been disappointed.
@@Rich-xz3loslowit
I work in Sheffield and am on Penistone Road every day my satnav actually does pronounce it Penis-tone...
We also have Beauchief, pronounced Bee chiff!
Woolfardisworthy in North Devon is if I remember right "woolsry".
I like the trend in the English language to borrow foreign language terms. They often get absorbed into the language with some small distinction in meaning. It makes for a lot of synonyms to choose from. English spelling on the other hand is awfully inconsistent for similar reasons. I lean to the idea of adopting a phonetic alphabet for English, but I'm not certain how to deal with all the homonyms. At least with the inconstant spelling you can easily determine which witch is which. I'm not a polyglot so if anyone has some insights into how their written language deals with homonyms I'd love to learn a few more options.
A number of Latin terms are used in Britain, chiefly in law, and to some extent in medical science. However, the Latin pronunciation is not always followed. Sung Latin also differs from the original. That was because one Pope thought that in church services Italian pronunciation should be adopted.
I am a native of Worcestershire. Best way to pronounce the sauce is "Lea and Perrins"
In my area there is the river Teign (Teen). The town at the mouth is Teignmouth (Tinmuth - home of Muse). Further up river there is Bishopsteignton (Bishops-tane-ton) and Kingsteignton (Kings-tane-ton - known locally as K-town). All this in the Teignbridge (Tinbridge) council area. Outsiders don't have a chance!
The county town in Berkshire (bark-shire) is Reading (red-ing).
'Qatar' gets its pronunciation from two things
The first sound is a Q/K consonant pronounced at the back of the throat, and is not something that is found in european languages (to my knowledge)
And the vowels are arabic short vowels that are deemphasized in pronouncing the word
Love your T-Shirt :)
North Carolina has a bunch of place names which are hard for people to say right. Conetoe, Rutherfordton, Mebane, Fuquay-Varina, Pfafftown, Uwharrie, Chalybeate...
I pronounce Qatar the same way you do, but my son in law was over there in the USAF and he says it like cutter. I also pronounce Worcestershire the same as you. I believe that to be the common pronunciation, at least in the US.
Scotland is full of unexpected pronunciations, such as Milngavie, Strathaven or Kirkudbrightshire, probably because they use roman letters differently to map celtic sounds onto them than they do for English.
As a Glaswegian I am familiar with all of these.
These guys are great. Jay also a couple of other channels. One about London design and another about British Politics. They are really funny.
Do you really think that? This faux ironic schtick is so unfunny. Do they make a living from it?
I guess that's your opinion. I like it. At least when it's done well. And I think they do it well. @@johnnyhmash
This reminds me of the time I went on a language study program in Mexico City while in college. One of the group had better Spanish vocabulary than I, but I had the accent down better than he. To hear us both pronounce the same word sounded almost like two different words, not to mention languages. The man in the light shirt looks like Pete Buttigieg, btw. And as for place names, "Lafayette" is pronounced "La-FAY-et" down south (Nashville), whereas it's "LA-fee-et" here in NY.
From the north Norfolk coast, Happisburgh locally pronounced Hays bru. Or also in Norfolk Costessey locally pronounced Cossy.
Belvoir (Castle, pronounced beaver), Magdalen (college, pronounced maudlin), Mainwaring (pr. mannering), Ralph and Ranulph (Fiennes, pr. rafe and ralph respectively), Menzies (Campbell, pr. mingus), Beaulieu (pr. byoolee), Beauchamp (pr. beecham), and the ever-famous Featherstonehaugh (pr. fanshaw)
As a teenager, I lived in a tiny village, called Tydd Gote, on the border of South Lincolnshire, & North Cambridgeshire, a few miles North of Wisbech.
The name of the village is pronounced 'tid-goat', & apparently, it began as 'tide-gate' during the reclamation of marshland around The Wash, by Dutch drainage engineers, a few hundred years ago.
I'm not sure about the 'tide gate' theory, as there are two other nearby villages called Tydd St Mary, & Tydd St Giles, neither of which are close to any tidal waterway, & were named many many hundreds of years before any land drainage! 🤔
Here in the midlands we have a few hard to pronounce areas due to local dialect.
Brewood - pronounced brood
Stourbridge - pronounced starbridge
Wombourne - pronounced womburn
And my personal favourite:
Coldmore - pronounced Karma 'no joke'.
Alcester - pronouced ol-ster
Stivichall - pronounced sty-chl
You’ve got a treasure of a channel here
Your "derbyshire" was perfect
You should check out some of the Australian names like Woolgoolga and Wagga Wagga or ginagay
There's this city here in Portugal called Olhão that I think if I wasnt portuguese it would be a nightmare to pronounce just looking at it. I think only portuguese speakers can 100% nail the pronounciation though. Edit. remembered another tricky one: Guimarães.
As a French, my first thought would be to pronounce it Olion the French way (\oljɔ̃\)...
I wonder how would they pronounce Fail (Viseu) ou Babe (Bragança). 😆
So, tip for english speakers: if you can't produce the nasal sound (that's what the ~ means), replace the next letter for an "n" and you'll sound LESS wrong. We know it's a tricky sound to make, so it's understandable. Idk, but I'd much rather hear people saying "San Paulo" than "Sao Paulo"... "Olhan", "Guimarans" is better than omitting the "ã".
By the way, "LH" is the same as the "LL" in spanish.
Portuguese spelling is quite hard for people that don't know any Portuguese. Even for people that know basic Portuguese is still somewhat complicated.
Wurrs-chester-shire. My brother lives in Carlisle which is just on the Scottish border. It's actually pronounced carl-ly-il. Crazy place. But we originally come from south africa where some suburbs have clicks in the names so I guess everywhere has their own thing going on.
my old town in Scotland's called Thurso. They used to tell me that it was norse and that it came from naming the town after Thor. Not really difficult but interesting nonetheless.
Yay! I'm from Frome and we spend an inordinate amount of time correcting people.
7:16 this is where history and names get really confusing. They said old norse places end in kirk and by (and others), but ironically i grew up next to a village called South Kirkby. I am still confused to this day lol.
Just to make it even more complicated. There are two towns in England with the same name. One in the South West and one in the East. They are pronounced completely differently. Mildenhall - in Norwich it is pronounced as you see it Mil-dun-hawl - However if you are in the town in Wiltshire, South West, it is pronounced MY-nəl
Ya learn summat every day, they say. That's me done, grabbers. I love that accent down there.
Mildenhall is not in "Norwich" (a city) or in Norfolk (the county), it is actually in Suffolk.
Near Liverpool there's Meols and Meols Cop just a dozen or so miles across the Mersey from each other. Meo;s is pronounced mells, but in Meols Cop it's meals.
There's a tiny village / hamlet in Northumberland, called Featherstonehaugh. It's pronounced Fanshaw. Or Fanshuff (depends where you're from). The local pronunciation of 'gh' is as 'f'. Eg, lakes in Northumberland are 'loughs', pronounced 'loff' (same as my surname, which is Northumbrian).
Featherstonehaugh is also a surname, pronounced Fanshaw. In fact it claims to be the longest non-hyphenated British surname.
I worked for a company who introduced some new sofa ranges named after British towns. One of the ranges was named after the town I'm from, but outside the area nobody could pronounce it and would argue with me that I was wrong. The town is Keighley. Near to Keighley is the village of Haworth which is often pronounced wrong. The village I'm from has a hill called Manywells which is also often pronounced wrong. I now live near Caldicot which is usually pronounced wrong except by those in the know, one of which is me but I still pronounce it wrong!
I love the English language. I am always puzzled as to why Americans can't pronounce Aluminium and Jaguar?
On holiday in Scotland I stayed in a lovely cottage in Glenbuchet.
I have deliberately left the correct pronunciations out. Feel free to guess!
please watch an Interview with an Anglo Saxon, by Simon Roper. It showcases just how different Old English was when these place names first came into being