Do you British folk also have problems pronouncing British place names such as Woolfardisworthy and Godmanchester? Because I can tell you that I for one have butchered the pronunciations of all of these (and yes I tried and didn't record myself to save the embarrassment).... but future video idea perhaps? I'm thankful for everyone's help on when I've said names incorrectly in past videos and I'm sure future videos, so keep it up! I would say "Bucking-HAM" for example. We're past that now, and onto bigger and better WILD, CRAZY British place names! Yippee-Ki-Yay!
Sometimes, but its not just that dialects also change, Godmanchester.. has changed recently we always used to say Gumster, but its becoming more Godmanchester..
I feel like the more famous ones in the UK are the ones that we're likely going to know how to prounounce so the ones who have something famous or popular history or near us are the ones we'd hear more often so we'd know how to pronounce but unless we've gone out of our way to learn, no, we wouldn't know how to pronounce all of them.
In towns in the eastern part of England you will find street names ending in "gate" - (Northgate, Middle Gate, Castle Gate etc.) The "gates referred to in these instances are not entrances or openings in the town wall, but derive from the Viking "gata" which just means street. When I was in Stockholm a few years ago , I noticed several streets with the same ending.
In short yes. There are so many towns and villages,in parts of the country that you rarely or never visit , that you never hear them being pronounced. Even places like the tiny village of Quernmore which is in the same County that I live. I have driven through it many a time but in my head I have been under the impression it was pronounced as it was spelt ( fortunately I have never needed to say it) . Thanks to this video I now know it's prnounced Quornmor.
You learn how place names are pronounced by hearing them spoken by people who already know. Guessing, based on what you already know can work, but there is no guarantee that you will be right. It is further complicated by local accents, of which there are many. For example, Ss pronounced as Zs in the west country.
I've been a long distance uk trucker for 34 years and yes, I've been laughed at when asking directions. (no sat navs back then) Imagine... "oi mate, do you know where this place is in Costessey" ? "???? Where" ? "Costessey" "ear - let me av a look... Oooh, hahahaha.. You mean Cozzy" "Um, yeah... That place". Then there's Wymondham
Living in the UK, yes, you can pretty much pronounce most of the place names unless they are the tricky traps mentioned in the video. Often local accents shape how they should be said as well. Notably, the city of Salford across the river from Manchester in North West England, is locally pronounced Sol-ford (the letters S A L rhyming with Salt) but people who live more south than Salford who say words like path, bath, past, last etc. where A’s sound like R’s in place names, and this only leads to some tense rivalry, although if you’re over a certain IQ it’s just banter.
Pretty much. Usually, place names that are long get shortened which happens to a lot of the English language, especially int’ north o’ England where the Industrial Revolution took place. The air was so polluted that it became more efficient to shorten sentences as much as possible so you didn’t have to breathe as much to speak. Welsh, on the other hand, is a complete mystery to most English people!
Place names in England are a fine example of how English had none standardized spelling and/or were named when English was spoken differently than we do today. There are many fine TH-cam videos of this. An example of this is Knight. We say this the same way as night. But when the word was set it was K-nich-t. Places that ended wick were more ich like German.
In general, most of these places you won't go to, talk about or meet anyone from, so you never need to know how to pronounce it. If you do, then someone will correct you if you get it wrong and it's usually so bizarre you won't forget it. :)
Yes anyone who grows up in the UK can generally pronouce the names without even thinking of it. Although we do have fun mispronouncing them for comedic effect.
I'm from the Leicestershire area of England I was born in Leicester and live in Loughborough ( pronounced Luv-bra or Luff- brah) I love the history of all the hard to pronounce town/ city names in the UK even at the ripe old age of 41 I'm still learning things .
Thank you for the name and correct (or how you, a local pronounce) pronunciation. I'm finding these all so interesting in the comments :) So Laughborough is Luv-bra. I can't say I would have pronounced that correctly before haha
Another amusing video - love your entertaining content. I guess as an English adult I'd get and pronounce 98% of those names but only by memory, although they mentioned Grimsby and Alnwick most of their examples were in the South - there are lots of abbreviated names in the North of England that kind of only make sense in a local dialect eg Hall'i'th'wood Welsh names for the most part are an enigma in English - if you travel there they use both the English name for a place and the Welsh name on road signs etc, in which case, unless you were born there, you've no chance - those guys could gargle for the world and vowels ? who needs vowels
@@jinxvrs obvs every spoken language requires vowels (I don't think that's contentious) it's just ascertaining what they are when written down - so English is AEIOU - as you've ably shown "Y" is often substituted for the "I" sound - which I think goes a long way to evidence the confusion around English.
@@helenwood8482 I tend to agree, it's a wonderfully lyrical language - but the comparison was to English. I speak Dutch too which is a poor cousin no doubt
Thank you, Scott! I'm happy my interests are interesting to others as well. Means a lot! Hall'i'th'wood?! Well that one seems complicated to get down and can't figure out the origin. Celtic-ish? I'm probably way off.
As Portsmouth got a mention I just thought I add that many locals would pronounce it Portsmouff because of the accent. That is of course unless they're not calling it Pompey, which is the nickname for Portsmouth.
The pronunciation of Launceston is great because you can tell where someone's from by the pronunciation. People from the US and Australia say 'lawn-cess-ton', other Brits say 'Lawn-ston' following general rules as laid out in the video, but any local knows it's 'Lan-son'!
ooooo at 9.59 my place of residence is there... Billericay in Essex, the town mentioned in the Domesday book had pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower to America. The town is very very old, and has lots of history. It is now twinned with Billerica in America where some of the families from England went, which actually takes the name of the original Billericay in England. You gotta love history.
It isn’t Grimsby at the start of the video I live there and of the roads into the town this doesn’t look like any of them, Grim the Viking was a fisherman and the town became a fishing port but declined after the codwar in the 70s against Iceland so by 1983 there wasn’t many trawlers left despite having had the biggest fishing fleet to having just three trawlers but the town is the biggest fish processing centre in Britain with the biggest concentration of cold stores.
I grew up in Cornwall and still don't know how to pronounce half the Cornish towns and villages, despite some of them only being a few miles away from my hometown!
Happy to know it's not just me but British as well which have trouble with certain names. I know there are plenty of names here in the US that I can't pronounce.
Yes as a Cornish person I can easily pronounce all the Welsh, Cornish and other Celtic place names as our languages are very similar and the English place names are easy as I grew up hearing them all on the TV and Radio so no problem at all. There are though one or two that are hard to get your head around but if you say it quickly it is usually close enough. I love hearing holiday makers come to Cornwall and mess up our place names and correcting them is always fun when you see the bermused looks on their faces. Map Men, Jay Foreman, brilliant I love watching their videos 😁❤
Great tip right there I'd have to try when saying some of those place names, say it quickly! I like it! Same here, really enjoy their videos, very entertaining and informative at the same time :)
Personally a few of my favourites Leominster pronounced lempster, Micheldever which has two mitchel dver and mitchal deeever (i live a mile or two away) and Reading, Reding
LlanfairPG is better memoriesed in parts. It.... also helps if you've grown up around the language even if you don't speak it because..... well some sounds are hard and they're just not found in english. On the other hand I'll give it props that phonetically it's far more consistent than english. Which explains why it's easier learning unfamiliar words and sounding them out.
Yes, absolutely! Like living around where I live there are plenty of Spanish names (and Spanish missions) everywhere. I know a decent amount of Spanish just growing up here. About 2 hours from Mexico which helps.
@@californianreacts Yes, exactly like that. You don't have to be fluent but there's that weird middle-ground. You know some bits and pieces and it comes far more naturally than suddenly learning another language. It was hell at school since English and Welsh were compulsory. Well there were exceptions for Welsh; mostly for older kids (think 10-11+) that had moved here. While we weren't fluent by any means, there was that baseline of knowledge from primary school ingraned in us and that's really REALLY hard for someone starting secondary to replicate. And then on top of that in my case, we also had compulsory French and German for 3 years. (I took French for the full 5 years, I just got french better than german). Oh and there was that one time the soon to be retiring Headmaster tried to headhunt me for extra curricular Latin classes. I passed on that. On the topic of language kinda, you should see if you can find things on weirdly named places in the UK. There's some downright hilarious ones. I'll start; I had family living in a place called Bishops Itchington. And yes, it sounds exactly as it says. I don't know why it's called that but it's funny as hell
@@misschieflolz1301 Great suggestion! I'll look to see if I can find some good videos on weirdly named places in the UK. Every country has some funky, strange, or hilarious names, and the UK should have some good ones!
One of the best places, which is pronounced differently in the UK, is the town of Mildenhall. The town in Suffolk is pronounced "MILL-DEN-HALL, But there is a place in Wiltshire, with the exact same spelling, but pronounced MINE-ALL.
Imagine a 100 mile blast radius and you're ground zero. At the first 100miles you know the names about 90%, then next 100mi ring you know about 80%, the next ring you know about 70%, after that it all sounds like Bob Dylan jumped into a cutlery grinder built for recycling. Being Welsh I seem to be pretty good at pronouncing Cornish names and Breton names (the languages are related and are about 11,000 years old) but Gaelic is from a different Celtic tree and it's as difficult for other Celts as it is for those with 'Saxon iron tongue'.
I enjoyed that video. Amazing how many American tourists here in London ask for directions to places they can't even pronounce. Also, how many Americans can pronounce Jaguar? You all say Jagwar. Ok, let me break it down for you. Jag - you - err, and then say it all together!
Ive lived for 30 years near a town in the UK called Hough-on-the-Hill and still have no idea how it's pronounced. Because everyone I ask says differently.
Try Featherstonhaugh, Cholmondeley, Woolfardisworthy, Alverdiscott, or Barnoldswick. Not a chance of getting them without looking them up. A clue, about half the letters and syllables vanish.
People from Shrewsbury argue about how it's pronounced. Legend has it, that if you live on the rich side of the river it's Shrows-bury, and the poor side it's as spelt, Shrews-bury. I'd they can't agree... 🤷🏻♂️
Growing up in the UK we can generally pronounce most of the names with Old Norse, Latin and Anglo Saxon origin. However, the Gaelic origin ones are way more difficult as we just don't need to know them or say them or hear about them as much. Or travel to them as often.
The town of Sandwich is pronounced just like it looks. The food sandwich is named after it. Specifically, after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. He popularised the idea of putting meat between two slices of bread, and the food was named a sandwich as a result.
Small point: Grim, as in Grimsby was also an alternative name for the god Odin. It's interesting because it's direct translation into English is Wednesbury (pron: 'wensbury)
It's very hard for English people to read then pronounce place names in Wales as the Welsh alphabet is longer, I think it's 29 letters and sometimes they represent different sounds to the English alphabet, I say English cos we say Zed (Z) as opposed to Zee(Z), we usually learn Welsh place-names by hearing them being said by locals in the area. Everywhere else I don't really have trouble with pronouncing but then again honestly I don't even know every single place in the UK still lol but as long as it's not Welsh I can pretty much read it easy enough or have heard it being said.
Is Britain it makes good sense when going somewhere completely different to find out how the place is pronounced, it endears you to the locals. Mundesley in Norfolk is tiny, but it is grounded Mundsley, you leave the es out in the middle. I got a free beer in a pub as an outsider saying it properly many years ago.
The same applies within the U.K.. For example, the Scots are divided into two roughly equal groups when it comes to their reactions to the pronunciation of Scottish place names by English tourists -The Indignant (“how dare these arrogant bastards come up here and deliberately mangle the names of our places just to humiliate us, yet again”) and The Amused (“don’t correct their pronunciation, give someone else the opportunity to have a laugh”). This is if course greatly facilitated by the apparently genetic inability of 90% of English people to pronounce either “ch” or “r” correctly. Opposing mobs of the Indignant and the Amused have been known to gather in Auchterarder on the rumour of a parked bus of English tourists, trying to fathom where the hell they are while being unable to pronounce any if it.
In the SE corner of the map, just below Greenwich aka Gren-ich, was Meopham, which is about 12 miles or so from me, and Is pronounced Mep-ham or Meph'm or Mep'am. We have an area called Twydall, which is pronounced Twiddle. And is a part of Gillingham, in Kent, which pronounced like a girls name Jill, rather than Gillingham in Dorset, which is pronounced like a fishes Gill! Confused yet! Lol.
Very confused indeed! haha. Interesting to see how they are spelled and pronounced, and makes a little more sense after watching this video as to why it is.
Sandwich is pronounced as you would expect, the same as something between slices of bread. Now, did you know, just up the road from Sandwich, is a place called "Ham"? There are even roadsigns saying "Ham Sandwich"!
The only comparison I can think of for you would be could you pronounce all the Spanish place names. You could give it a good go, as you are familiar with some of them near you, so you sort of know how the language rules work. Same idea for us in the UK. And if you don't know how to say a place, you keep quite and listen for someone else to say it first!
I don't think all Brits can name all these places correctly without local knowledge. However they can probably name a lot of them correctly. Interestingly in Birmingham there is an Alcester Road which leads to Alcester. Local Brummies pronounce it ALCESTER but on youtube recently I learned it's meant to be pronounced ALSTER. I grew up in that area and never heard anyone use the 'correct' pronunciation.
It makes the whole UK even more interesting than it already is with the deep history into place names there. I am enjoying hearing examples in the comments such as your Alcester/Alster? one. I would have pronounced it the same way you did. Around here in Southern California we have lots of roads with Spanish names. Some examples are Cahuenga Boulevard, La Tijera Boulevard, El Camino Real and Esperanza. Luckily, it's simply Spanish and not a mix of many different languages mixing like it is in the UK.
There is usually no need to know how these place names are pronounced by the local residents, unless you plan to interact with those local residents. As long as you know where you mean, the map works just fine for directions. I didn't even know that Gotham Village existed, until I scanned the internet for the origin of the sinister-sounding Gotham City. Yes, Gotham Village is the origin of Gotham City, but I didn't know that the name was being mispronounced.
We only know when we visit. Take Leominster, I got it wrong until we had a client I had to visit for work....they soon put me right. Near me is a village called Todwick.....I got that wrong at first....it's Toddick.
I live just several miles from Sandwich 😊 its pronounced just sandwich. And the sandwich (food) was named after the 4th earl of sandwich. (just did a google search and found out there's currently an 11th earl of sandwich who's in the House of Lords lol)
how you can tell a visitor from a local, after a short time you pick up the local pronunciation of small town and villages so you read the word some places have two names, a victorian seaside resort was called by visitors Hunstanton but by locals in dialect H'unstn.
85% - as many have said in the comments, there are a few where if you're NOT from the area you can make a stab at but still get wrong. Frome for example - I had to wait until a friend lived there before realising that I'd been saying it wrong all this time ^*^
9:40 I can pronounce most of these, but mostly just because I've either heard of them, or because the fact that they're in a video about hard to pronounce names. For instance, I know that "Norwich" is pronounced, "Norrich," and, while I've never heard of it, I can infer that "Flitwick" is probably pronounced "Flittick."
9:33 At school we are taught the differences of accents of the UK as part of English lessons, as we are more likely to discover them via travelling about the UK. Pronunciations are taught to a high level, so most children are taught it. We may forget how to say it but soon remember the word after learning them. English language lessons does cover a lot of topics at schools, the history dialects, pronunciations and its a government requirement for English to be spoken well, understood and written well. Our language should be taught better here than anywhere else.
Place names here are impossible to predict every time I live near Bristol which is pronounced as it’s spelt but some locals with there accent say brizzle so locals aren’t always the best to ask 🤣
you need to hear a local pronounce the ones that aren't phonetic. i went to school in Kineton, and people even 10 miles away can't pronounce it correctly. there are still places that have two spellings like, Styvechale/Stivichall, pronounced the same.
Don't forget that Welsh is a completely different language from English, and has a different alphabet. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch means "The Church of St. Mary in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near to a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio Near to the Red Cave".
Can I pronounce most British place names properly? Not the English or Scottish ones, I'll likely get the more commonly referenced places right but there'll definitely be a whole bunch of obscure ones that'll catch me out. The Welsh place names are easy for me, but that's because I have the benefit of being bilingual Welsh/English and unlike English, the Welsh language is pretty predictable in terms of pronounciation once you've learned how each letter is supposed to be pronounced .
Just to clarify what I mean by that last sentence. The letter 'a' in English might be pronounced any number of different ways (compare the 'a' sound in 'bare' to the ones in 'bath', 'bathe', or 'car'), but in Welsh it's always pronounced exactly the same way (the way most Brits* and Americans pronounce the 'a' in 'bath'). That's the case with nearly every letter in Welsh, and if the letter appears in the spelling then its pronounced when you read it aloud. *Unless you're posh or are talking about the place Bath, in which case you'd probably produce a sound closer to the 'a' in 'car'.
Everyone seems to think Welsh is very difficult compared to many of these. Growing up there should make it easy-ish. I have lots of Spanish road and city names all around me which I'm used to. I'll have to use these tips when looking at Wales and their place names.
@@californianreacts It's not the easiest language to pick up if English is your only other language, to be fair. The double l sound, rh sound and ch sound don't exist in English and are quite hard for an English speaker to learn how to produce, and many of the letters aren't pronounced the way an English speaker might expect, so I can certainly see why it has that reputation.
04:52 Complete 'ankers'? 🤣 that pesky silent "W". We need to hear the pronuciations before we know how to say them, generally we would have heard them on the news or by said by someone else.
Give it a few hundred years and, for example, Philadelphia will be actually pronounced "Philly" and residents will look at you funny if you say the comedy word "Philadelphia ".
The solution is mind-blindingly simple: the English cannot spell. LOL OTOH how would you pronounce Irish topographical names: Teamhar? Chower: Tara in English. They never did manage to learn our names Emhain Macha? Ow-in Makha: Armagh in English Ciarraí? Kee-ar-ree: Kerry in English. I could continue this but it would be rather pointless as English is silly. Ghoti should be prounced Fish. Do you ask why? RouGH: 'GH' is 'F'. 'Wo' in Women is the letter 'I': and TI is SH as in Nation. I'll be having some Ghoti for dinner this evening. BTW Connor, why do you have an Irish name? Go bhfása 's go maire tú! (Use Google translate!)
You got us there! We do have our fair share of words that are hard to pronounce including: Albuquerque - Albukerkee Arkansas - Arkansaw Bangor (Maine) - Bang-or (hard “g”; does not sound like “banger”) Birmingham -Stress and emphasize the “ham” Boise (Idaho) - Boyzee Des Moines (Iowa) - De Moyn Des Plaines (Illinois) - Dess Planes Houston - Hyooston (not Hooston) La Jolla (California) - La Hoya Louisville (Kentucky) - Leweeville Raleigh - Rarley (with a British middle “r”) St. Louis - St. Lewis Salem - Saylem San Jose - San Hozay Spokane (Washington) - Spo-kan Syracuse (New York) - Sirrakyooz Topeka (Kansas) - Toepeeka
@@californianreacts there are some sumptuous place names in the US for sure - but many of those you mention are either English or new Spanish or French as well as a smattering of wonderfully pronounced Native American names. So I'll trump you with the (11thC Norman French) "Ashby de la Zouch" in Leicestershire
Please don't follow this nonsense these are not British place names. I come from Wales and we have a totally different language. In my country English is a second language in many areas. I find it highly insulting and just plain dull. The language he describes as Celtic is in reality Welsh. To sum Up this is not a review of British place names and totally misleading, did they even mention Scotland, NI or any of the British islands. oooh it makes me so angry!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Do you British folk also have problems pronouncing British place names such as Woolfardisworthy and Godmanchester? Because I can tell you that I for one have butchered the pronunciations of all of these (and yes I tried and didn't record myself to save the embarrassment).... but future video idea perhaps?
I'm thankful for everyone's help on when I've said names incorrectly in past videos and I'm sure future videos, so keep it up! I would say "Bucking-HAM" for example. We're past that now, and onto bigger and better WILD, CRAZY British place names!
Yippee-Ki-Yay!
Sometimes, but its not just that dialects also change, Godmanchester.. has changed recently we always used to say Gumster, but its becoming more Godmanchester..
Godmanchester, god-muhn-cheh-stuh pronounced differently to Manchester, man-cheh-stuh as it's man not muhn in manchester.
I feel like the more famous ones in the UK are the ones that we're likely going to know how to prounounce so the ones who have something famous or popular history or near us are the ones we'd hear more often so we'd know how to pronounce but unless we've gone out of our way to learn, no, we wouldn't know how to pronounce all of them.
Woolfardisworthy... Locals say Woolsery (this caused me some confusion when house hunting)
@@Only1janetc local accents local dialects add another layer of confusion
In towns in the eastern part of England you will find street names ending in "gate" - (Northgate, Middle Gate, Castle Gate etc.) The "gates referred to in these instances are not entrances or openings in the town wall, but derive from the Viking "gata" which just means street. When I was in Stockholm a few years ago , I noticed several streets with the same ending.
Interesting! Appreciate the extra information on this video and the history/origin behind "gate." Thanks, David :)
Indeed! Like Kungsgatan or Drottninggatan! (Kings street and Queens street)
In short yes. There are so many towns and villages,in parts of the country that you rarely or never visit , that you never hear them being pronounced. Even places like the tiny village of Quernmore which is in the same County that I live. I have driven through it many a time but in my head I have been under the impression it was pronounced as it was spelt ( fortunately I have never needed to say it) . Thanks to this video I now know it's prnounced Quornmor.
I'm glad you learned something! Where I'm here needing to watch it multiple times to start wrapping my head around it all. A work in progress!
All of their videos are gold in my opinion! Looking forward to any more reaction you do to them
You learn how place names are pronounced by hearing them spoken by people who already know. Guessing, based on what you already know can work, but there is no guarantee that you will be right. It is further complicated by local accents, of which there are many. For example, Ss pronounced as Zs in the west country.
I've been a long distance uk trucker for 34 years and yes, I've been laughed at when asking directions. (no sat navs back then)
Imagine... "oi mate, do you know where this place is in Costessey" ?
"???? Where" ?
"Costessey"
"ear - let me av a look... Oooh, hahahaha.. You mean Cozzy"
"Um, yeah... That place".
Then there's Wymondham
Jay Foreman does some very good videos.
Very entertaining guys! And do their research unlike a few video's I've seen and reacted to in the past. I'll be checking out more of theirs.
Living in the UK, yes, you can pretty much pronounce most of the place names unless they are the tricky traps mentioned in the video.
Often local accents shape how they should be said as well.
Notably, the city of Salford across the river from Manchester in North West England, is locally pronounced Sol-ford (the letters S A L rhyming with Salt) but people who live more south than Salford who say words like path, bath, past, last etc. where A’s sound like R’s in place names, and this only leads to some tense rivalry, although if you’re over a certain IQ it’s just banter.
Well worth subscribing to them as they produce loads of interesting content.
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Pretty much. Usually, place names that are long get shortened which happens to a lot of the English language, especially int’ north o’ England where the Industrial Revolution took place. The air was so polluted that it became more efficient to shorten sentences as much as possible so you didn’t have to breathe as much to speak.
Welsh, on the other hand, is a complete mystery to most English people!
Great reaction. Def watch more of map men. Apart from the those relating to maps/world they have a great London series too.
Place names in England are a fine example of how English had none standardized spelling and/or were named when English was spoken differently than we do today.
There are many fine TH-cam videos of this. An example of this is Knight. We say this the same way as night. But when the word was set it was K-nich-t. Places that ended wick were more ich like German.
In general, most of these places you won't go to, talk about or meet anyone from, so you never need to know how to pronounce it. If you do, then someone will correct you if you get it wrong and it's usually so bizarre you won't forget it. :)
I bet! They are a little bizarre, at least these examples and some of the ones in the comments I'm enjoying learning (or trying to).
Yes anyone who grows up in the UK can generally pronouce the names without even thinking of it.
Although we do have fun mispronouncing them for comedic effect.
That's just mean. 😂
I'm from the Leicestershire area of England I was born in Leicester and live in Loughborough ( pronounced Luv-bra or Luff- brah) I love the history of all the hard to pronounce town/ city names in the UK even at the ripe old age of 41 I'm still learning things .
Thank you for the name and correct (or how you, a local pronounce) pronunciation. I'm finding these all so interesting in the comments :)
So Laughborough is Luv-bra. I can't say I would have pronounced that correctly before haha
Another amusing video - love your entertaining content. I guess as an English adult I'd get and pronounce 98% of those names but only by memory, although they mentioned Grimsby and Alnwick most of their examples were in the South - there are lots of abbreviated names in the North of England that kind of only make sense in a local dialect eg Hall'i'th'wood
Welsh names for the most part are an enigma in English - if you travel there they use both the English name for a place and the Welsh name on road signs etc, in which case, unless you were born there, you've no chance - those guys could gargle for the world and vowels ? who needs vowels
Welsh has extra vowels. It's the English who are vowel-deprived.
Welsh needs vowels - a,e,i,o,u,w & y. So explain the English words : hymn, pygmy, rhythm, angry etc.
@@jinxvrs obvs every spoken language requires vowels (I don't think that's contentious) it's just ascertaining what they are when written down - so English is AEIOU - as you've ably shown "Y" is often substituted for the "I" sound - which I think goes a long way to evidence the confusion around English.
@@helenwood8482 I tend to agree, it's a wonderfully lyrical language - but the comparison was to English. I speak Dutch too which is a poor cousin no doubt
Thank you, Scott! I'm happy my interests are interesting to others as well. Means a lot!
Hall'i'th'wood?! Well that one seems complicated to get down and can't figure out the origin. Celtic-ish? I'm probably way off.
As Portsmouth got a mention I just thought I add that many locals would pronounce it Portsmouff because of the accent. That is of course unless they're not calling it Pompey, which is the nickname for Portsmouth.
The pronunciation of Launceston is great because you can tell where someone's from by the pronunciation. People from the US and Australia say 'lawn-cess-ton', other Brits say 'Lawn-ston' following general rules as laid out in the video, but any local knows it's 'Lan-son'!
Locals can always spot a grockle or an emmet!
ooooo at 9.59 my place of residence is there... Billericay in Essex, the town mentioned in the Domesday book had pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower to America. The town is very very old, and has lots of history. It is now twinned with Billerica in America where some of the families from England went, which actually takes the name of the original Billericay in England. You gotta love history.
I'm from Liverpool, said like liver (the organ) pool , however our historic monument the Liver Bird is said like "live" as in live tv er bird
I can pronounce most places now, but I spent a lot of my childhood arguing with my Dad about Leominster and Bicester.
It isn’t Grimsby at the start of the video I live there and of the roads into the town this doesn’t look like any of them, Grim the Viking was a fisherman and the town became a fishing port but declined after the codwar in the 70s against Iceland so by 1983 there wasn’t many trawlers left despite having had the biggest fishing fleet to having just three trawlers but the town is the biggest fish processing centre in Britain with the biggest concentration of cold stores.
I grew up in Cornwall and still don't know how to pronounce half the Cornish towns and villages, despite some of them only being a few miles away from my hometown!
Happy to know it's not just me but British as well which have trouble with certain names. I know there are plenty of names here in the US that I can't pronounce.
Godmanchester is pronounced Gumster by the locals, anyone not local usually pronounce it as spelt.
Yes as a Cornish person I can easily pronounce all the Welsh, Cornish and other Celtic place names as our languages are very similar and the English place names are easy as I grew up hearing them all on the TV and Radio so no problem at all. There are though one or two that are hard to get your head around but if you say it quickly it is usually close enough. I love hearing holiday makers come to Cornwall and mess up our place names and correcting them is always fun when you see the bermused looks on their faces. Map Men, Jay Foreman, brilliant I love watching their videos 😁❤
Great tip right there I'd have to try when saying some of those place names, say it quickly! I like it! Same here, really enjoy their videos, very entertaining and informative at the same time :)
@@californianreacts 💖💖💖
Personally a few of my favourites Leominster pronounced lempster, Micheldever which has two mitchel dver and mitchal deeever (i live a mile or two away) and Reading, Reding
I so want to say Leo-minster. Seems straight forward until I hear how you actually pronounce it Lempster. Thanks for adding these, Richard!
My home city is Bristol, the original settlers were Saxon. It was originally named Brigstock, then became Brigstowe..... And then Bristol
Couple of tricky ones from Scotland- 'Auchinleck' pronounced 'Affleck' 'Featherstonehaugh' pronounced 'Fanshawe' 'Marjoribanks' pronounced 'Marshbanks'
LlanfairPG is better memoriesed in parts.
It.... also helps if you've grown up around the language even if you don't speak it because..... well some sounds are hard and they're just not found in english. On the other hand I'll give it props that phonetically it's far more consistent than english.
Which explains why it's easier learning unfamiliar words and sounding them out.
Yes, absolutely! Like living around where I live there are plenty of Spanish names (and Spanish missions) everywhere. I know a decent amount of Spanish just growing up here. About 2 hours from Mexico which helps.
@@californianreacts Yes, exactly like that. You don't have to be fluent but there's that weird middle-ground. You know some bits and pieces and it comes far more naturally than suddenly learning another language.
It was hell at school since English and Welsh were compulsory. Well there were exceptions for Welsh; mostly for older kids (think 10-11+) that had moved here. While we weren't fluent by any means, there was that baseline of knowledge from primary school ingraned in us and that's really REALLY hard for someone starting secondary to replicate.
And then on top of that in my case, we also had compulsory French and German for 3 years. (I took French for the full 5 years, I just got french better than german). Oh and there was that one time the soon to be retiring Headmaster tried to headhunt me for extra curricular Latin classes. I passed on that.
On the topic of language kinda, you should see if you can find things on weirdly named places in the UK. There's some downright hilarious ones. I'll start; I had family living in a place called Bishops Itchington. And yes, it sounds exactly as it says. I don't know why it's called that but it's funny as hell
@@misschieflolz1301 Great suggestion! I'll look to see if I can find some good videos on weirdly named places in the UK. Every country has some funky, strange, or hilarious names, and the UK should have some good ones!
Just to confuse matters the locals pronounce Shrewsbury both as Shrows-bree and Shroos-bree!
Lovely! Two ways to say place names now haha. I think I like 'Shroos-bree', maybe purely from the spelling.
One of the best places, which is pronounced differently in the UK, is the town of Mildenhall. The town in Suffolk is pronounced "MILL-DEN-HALL, But there is a place in Wiltshire, with the exact same spelling, but pronounced MINE-ALL.
Imagine a 100 mile blast radius and you're ground zero. At the first 100miles you know the names about 90%, then next 100mi ring you know about 80%, the next ring you know about 70%, after that it all sounds like Bob Dylan jumped into a cutlery grinder built for recycling. Being Welsh I seem to be pretty good at pronouncing Cornish names and Breton names (the languages are related and are about 11,000 years old) but Gaelic is from a different Celtic tree and it's as difficult for other Celts as it is for those with 'Saxon iron tongue'.
My lovely mum was born in llanfrynach in Wales. I was born in Islington....London...not so hard to pronounce 😂
I enjoyed that video. Amazing how many American tourists here in London ask for directions to places they can't even pronounce. Also, how many Americans can pronounce Jaguar? You all say Jagwar. Ok, let me break it down for you. Jag - you - err, and then say it all together!
Ive lived for 30 years near a town in the UK called Hough-on-the-Hill and still have no idea how it's pronounced.
Because everyone I ask says differently.
I'm ok with most of the larger places but there are a lot of small villages I've no idea how to pronounce
Try Featherstonhaugh, Cholmondeley, Woolfardisworthy, Alverdiscott, or Barnoldswick.
Not a chance of getting them without looking them up.
A clue, about half the letters and syllables vanish.
People from Shrewsbury argue about how it's pronounced.
Legend has it, that if you live on the rich side of the river it's Shrows-bury, and the poor side it's as spelt, Shrews-bury.
I'd they can't agree... 🤷🏻♂️
Growing up in the UK we can generally pronounce most of the names with Old Norse, Latin and Anglo Saxon origin. However, the Gaelic origin ones are way more difficult as we just don't need to know them or say them or hear about them as much. Or travel to them as often.
The town of Sandwich is pronounced just like it looks. The food sandwich is named after it. Specifically, after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. He popularised the idea of putting meat between two slices of bread, and the food was named a sandwich as a result.
Small point: Grim, as in Grimsby was also an alternative name for the god Odin. It's interesting because it's direct translation into English is Wednesbury (pron: 'wensbury)
It's very hard for English people to read then pronounce place names in Wales as the Welsh alphabet is longer, I think it's 29 letters and sometimes they represent different sounds to the English alphabet, I say English cos we say Zed (Z) as opposed to Zee(Z), we usually learn Welsh place-names by hearing them being said by locals in the area. Everywhere else I don't really have trouble with pronouncing but then again honestly I don't even know every single place in the UK still lol but as long as it's not Welsh I can pretty much read it easy enough or have heard it being said.
It's a mix some I can't pronounce and some I'm so familiar with it feels strange to think about how they should be pronounced phonetically
Is Britain it makes good sense when going somewhere completely different to find out how the place is pronounced, it endears you to the locals. Mundesley in Norfolk is tiny, but it is grounded Mundsley, you leave the es out in the middle. I got a free beer in a pub as an outsider saying it properly many years ago.
The same applies within the U.K.. For example, the Scots are divided into two roughly equal groups when it comes to their reactions to the pronunciation of Scottish place names by English tourists -The Indignant (“how dare these arrogant bastards come up here and deliberately mangle the names of our places just to humiliate us, yet again”) and The Amused (“don’t correct their pronunciation, give someone else the opportunity to have a laugh”). This is if course greatly facilitated by the apparently genetic inability of 90% of English people to pronounce either “ch” or “r” correctly. Opposing mobs of the Indignant and the Amused have been known to gather in Auchterarder on the rumour of a parked bus of English tourists, trying to fathom where the hell they are while being unable to pronounce any if it.
In the SE corner of the map, just below Greenwich aka Gren-ich, was Meopham, which is about 12 miles or so from me, and Is pronounced Mep-ham or Meph'm or Mep'am.
We have an area called Twydall, which is pronounced Twiddle. And is a part of Gillingham, in Kent, which pronounced like a girls name Jill, rather than Gillingham in Dorset, which is pronounced like a fishes Gill! Confused yet! Lol.
Very confused indeed! haha. Interesting to see how they are spelled and pronounced, and makes a little more sense after watching this video as to why it is.
2:07 - ''Greenland has...'' [gets out machine to say it for him]
probably thinking 'No way I'm even trying that one' 🤣
Sandwich is pronounced as you would expect, the same as something between slices of bread. Now, did you know, just up the road from Sandwich, is a place called "Ham"? There are even roadsigns saying "Ham Sandwich"!
I literally live ten minutes away from Leominster and only recently learned it was pronounced Lemster not Leeyominster
The only comparison I can think of for you would be could you pronounce all the Spanish place names. You could give it a good go, as you are familiar with some of them near you, so you sort of know how the language rules work. Same idea for us in the UK. And if you don't know how to say a place, you keep quite and listen for someone else to say it first!
They did a video called 'Where is America?', its hilarious, you should watch that one 😁
Absolutely! Looking it up now :)
I can't remember how long Llanfair P.G. took me to pronounce ... I grew up in North Wales so I got a leg up. Lol.
Welsh names are defiantly rough or impossible for me when I viewed counties and place names around Wales. It's a skill!
I don't think all Brits can name all these places correctly without local knowledge. However they can probably name a lot of them correctly. Interestingly in Birmingham there is an Alcester Road which leads to Alcester. Local Brummies pronounce it ALCESTER but on youtube recently I learned it's meant to be pronounced ALSTER. I grew up in that area and never heard anyone use the 'correct' pronunciation.
It makes the whole UK even more interesting than it already is with the deep history into place names there. I am enjoying hearing examples in the comments such as your Alcester/Alster? one. I would have pronounced it the same way you did.
Around here in Southern California we have lots of roads with Spanish names. Some examples are Cahuenga Boulevard, La Tijera Boulevard, El Camino Real and Esperanza.
Luckily, it's simply Spanish and not a mix of many different languages mixing like it is in the UK.
Near me is a suburb of Slough called Cippenham where the 'C' is pronounced as an 'S'. Took me a while to realise. Explained a little of strange looks.
@12:48. Oh wow! My home town in on this map. Godalming.
There is usually no need to know how these place names are pronounced by the local residents, unless you plan to interact with those local residents. As long as you know where you mean, the map works just fine for directions. I didn't even know that Gotham Village existed, until I scanned the internet for the origin of the sinister-sounding Gotham City. Yes, Gotham Village is the origin of Gotham City, but I didn't know that the name was being mispronounced.
No pronunciation is a great source of amusement to locals . Many names geographical and make sense these are usually the oldest.
We only know when we visit. Take Leominster, I got it wrong until we had a client I had to visit for work....they soon put me right.
Near me is a village called Todwick.....I got that wrong at first....it's Toddick.
I live just several miles from Sandwich 😊 its pronounced just sandwich. And the sandwich (food) was named after the 4th earl of sandwich. (just did a google search and found out there's currently an 11th earl of sandwich who's in the House of Lords lol)
went there on holiday once, It was when I was really young and had no clue that we had a place named sandwich XD
I work in Portishead - Port-his-hed. Or maybe Port-his-ed.
how you can tell a visitor from a local, after a short time you pick up the local pronunciation of small town and villages so you read the word some places have two names, a victorian seaside resort was called by visitors Hunstanton but by locals in dialect H'unstn.
85% - as many have said in the comments, there are a few where if you're NOT from the area you can make a stab at but still get wrong. Frome for example - I had to wait until a friend lived there before realising that I'd been saying it wrong all this time ^*^
In many parts of the US we have many native American named. Like Wicomico. Looks like WeekoMAheeko. It's WihKOmeeko.
I've not even heard of most of these places lol ..I'm from kent (easy peasy ) .
Ah Kent, now that's a name I can pronounce! Thank you Clare for keeping this one easy for me :)
What about Meopham and Wrotham! Both in Kent
Arundel is Norman I believe, I recently came across that one myself.
I live in the NW of the UK Accents are hard We have so many Honestly you can go 50 miles or less and the accent is completely different
9:40 I can pronounce most of these, but mostly just because I've either heard of them, or because the fact that they're in a video about hard to pronounce names. For instance, I know that "Norwich" is pronounced, "Norrich," and, while I've never heard of it, I can infer that "Flitwick" is probably pronounced "Flittick."
They could just change the town name...
I was born in Eeklo.
It used to be called Eikenlo.
Eik = oak.
Basically a place near an oak forest.
9:33 At school we are taught the differences of accents of the UK as part of English lessons, as we are more likely to discover them via travelling about the UK.
Pronunciations are taught to a high level, so most children are taught it. We may forget how to say it but soon remember the word after learning them.
English language lessons does cover a lot of topics at schools, the history dialects, pronunciations and its a government requirement for English to be spoken well, understood and written well. Our language should be taught better here than anywhere else.
That's impressive, but I see why one may need to learn the pronunciations. Very complicated! Plus a good history/language lesson.
@@californianreacts Yes the English lessons in the UK are intense. As always a pleasure chatting to you too. Keep up the good work 👍.
We know some of the place names but some of them? Nope. Interesting to see the different areas of the UK based on settlement.
I can say the ones that are near me okay, less so the ones that are further afield.
Place names here are impossible to predict every time I live near Bristol which is pronounced as it’s spelt but some locals with there accent say brizzle so locals aren’t always the best to ask 🤣
Nempnett Thrubwell for one mucker 👍😉
most of the rules are universal. or you’ll hear someone refer to a place and you’ll know how to pronounce it
you need to hear a local pronounce the ones that aren't phonetic. i went to school in Kineton, and people even 10 miles away can't pronounce it correctly. there are still places that have two spellings like, Styvechale/Stivichall, pronounced the same.
I love the fact the location is set to Frome.
I'm from godalming, work in guildford. Guildford is pronounced as gil-Ford a silent D. Godalming is pronounced God-ol-ming
Thank you for the pronunciation, Matthew! Would never have guess that the D is silent in Guildford. Gil-ford it is!
Is that like us Peterborians calling Cambridge Scumbridge ?
Don't forget that Welsh is a completely different language from English, and has a different alphabet. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch means "The Church of St. Mary in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near to a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio Near to the Red Cave".
Can I pronounce most British place names properly? Not the English or Scottish ones, I'll likely get the more commonly referenced places right but there'll definitely be a whole bunch of obscure ones that'll catch me out. The Welsh place names are easy for me, but that's because I have the benefit of being bilingual Welsh/English and unlike English, the Welsh language is pretty predictable in terms of pronounciation once you've learned how each letter is supposed to be pronounced .
Just to clarify what I mean by that last sentence. The letter 'a' in English might be pronounced any number of different ways (compare the 'a' sound in 'bare' to the ones in 'bath', 'bathe', or 'car'), but in Welsh it's always pronounced exactly the same way (the way most Brits* and Americans pronounce the 'a' in 'bath'). That's the case with nearly every letter in Welsh, and if the letter appears in the spelling then its pronounced when you read it aloud.
*Unless you're posh or are talking about the place Bath, in which case you'd probably produce a sound closer to the 'a' in 'car'.
Everyone seems to think Welsh is very difficult compared to many of these. Growing up there should make it easy-ish. I have lots of Spanish road and city names all around me which I'm used to. I'll have to use these tips when looking at Wales and their place names.
@@californianreacts It's not the easiest language to pick up if English is your only other language, to be fair. The double l sound, rh sound and ch sound don't exist in English and are quite hard for an English speaker to learn how to produce, and many of the letters aren't pronounced the way an English speaker might expect, so I can certainly see why it has that reputation.
Us English don’t bother with the Welsh language. I mean how can you have words with no vowels in them?
04:52 Complete 'ankers'? 🤣 that pesky silent "W". We need to hear the pronuciations before we know how to say them, generally we would have heard them on the news or by said by someone else.
One of those things where you need to live there to grasp many of these.
F*ucking in Austria is my personal favourite
I’ve found personally there are some you just like instantly know how to pronounce (instinct)and others are what the …..
Yes I can not speaking for everyone just me Came to UK from Ireland 40 odd years ago
Try Orcadian or Shetland names.
You do remember that the US is 200-300 old while the UK is over 1000?
To be fair it me about 30 years to know how to pronounce Arkansas! Explain that one young man, Kansas with Ar in front??¿🏴
I live in a place called Southwark pronounced Sud uck
northumberlands most famous place name....ulgham......aside from the much larger alnwick. and no you wont get it right.)
Excuse me, would you mispronounce Portsmouth for me?
Froom
The only English place name I have a problem saying is Worcestershire.
Oh saucy
Woss-Ster-Shur sauce.
Give it a few hundred years and, for example, Philadelphia will be actually pronounced "Philly" and residents will look at you funny if you say the comedy word "Philadelphia ".
Cosham and Bosham. Cosh ham an d Bos am.
I can indeed pronounce Frome properly
The solution is mind-blindingly simple: the English cannot spell. LOL
OTOH how would you pronounce Irish topographical names:
Teamhar? Chower: Tara in English. They never did manage to learn our names
Emhain Macha? Ow-in Makha: Armagh in English
Ciarraí? Kee-ar-ree: Kerry in English.
I could continue this but it would be rather pointless as English is silly.
Ghoti should be prounced Fish. Do you ask why? RouGH: 'GH' is 'F'. 'Wo' in Women is the letter 'I': and TI is SH as in Nation.
I'll be having some Ghoti for dinner this evening.
BTW Connor, why do you have an Irish name?
Go bhfása 's go maire tú! (Use Google translate!)
Arkansas. I rest my case
You got us there! We do have our fair share of words that are hard to pronounce including:
Albuquerque - Albukerkee
Arkansas - Arkansaw
Bangor (Maine) - Bang-or (hard “g”; does not sound like “banger”)
Birmingham -Stress and emphasize the “ham”
Boise (Idaho) - Boyzee
Des Moines (Iowa) - De Moyn
Des Plaines (Illinois) - Dess Planes
Houston - Hyooston (not Hooston)
La Jolla (California) - La Hoya
Louisville (Kentucky) - Leweeville
Raleigh - Rarley (with a British middle “r”)
St. Louis - St. Lewis
Salem - Saylem
San Jose - San Hozay
Spokane (Washington) - Spo-kan
Syracuse (New York) - Sirrakyooz
Topeka (Kansas) - Toepeeka
@@californianreacts there are some sumptuous place names in the US for sure - but many of those you mention are either English or new Spanish or French as well as a smattering of wonderfully pronounced Native American names. So I'll trump you with the (11thC Norman French) "Ashby de la Zouch" in Leicestershire
No, just no. I am Brit you just have to go and hear a local say it.
=D
sorry hang on, you're doing place names hard to pronounce... and you're just gonna pretend Wales doesn't exist? 😅
Perhaps they didn't want to even attempt it? After this video I looked at a map of Wales and wow were those names wild!
@@californianreacts Maybe because they speak a different language in Wales. English is a 2nd language over there.
Please don't follow this nonsense these are not British place names. I come from Wales and we have a totally different language. In my country English is a second language in many areas. I find it highly insulting and just plain dull. The language he describes as Celtic is in reality Welsh. To sum Up this is not a review of British place names and totally misleading, did they even mention Scotland, NI or any of the British islands. oooh it makes me so angry!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can see that 😊