In England, social class is still very important! A person's accent and vocabulary say a lot about their family background. Make sure to watch my new video about how posh people speak: ua-cam.com/video/gPqh9-gEYTY/v-deo.html
Do you have one with the shires, Edinburg, Loughborough, and Middlesbrough etc...😊 I'm from North Yorkshire, but moved to the USA as an adult 😊 We pronounced it Shroosbree, but I'm not posh 😄
@@leebennett4117 English is a crap combination of other languages. I learned this helping a friend who taught English in China. I could not explain lots of things! Your science teacher was right.
As a native German, I was able to guess the majority of meanings of those suffxies instantly. "-ham" is the equivalent to "heim" (eng.: home) in German, "-bury" to "burg" (eng. fort), "-field" to (the direct tanslation) "feld" and "-ford" to "furt" (eng. ford?; shallow area of a river) that are very popular suffixes for German towns as well as "-ing" (in Swabia more often "-ingen") for places named after a group/family of people. Pool is probably derived from "port", and "-mouth" sounds still very similar to the German "Mündung" (derived from Mund) of a river. So only -cester (ger. Kastell?), -shire, -worth and -which weren't self-explanatory suffixes to me. Glad to see that their are still some "germanic" words (from Old Saxony) to be found in English today. It make the language feel much more familiar to Germans like me compared to romanian or slavic languages spoken in bordering countries - and probably the other way around, too, if any English native speakers are brave enough to put up with the articles, genders and cases of the German language... Beyond that, the vocabulary isn't that much different! :D
German suffixes are amusing because they sound like different English words. -heit (-hood) sounds like "height". (And -hood sounds like hood or hoodlum.) -schaft (-ship) sounds like "shaft".-ung (-ing) sounds uneducated. -tum (-dom) looks like tum/tummy (slang for stomach) or Tums (brand of tablets). And some words have one suffix in German but another in English.
As a German I thought of the cities named Schweinfurt and Ochsenfurt in Germany, when it came to the -ford‘s ( assuming (but not knowing) that the local pronounciation would be about the same in local German dialect as in English). (The river Main was presumably fordable / crossable with a herd of Swine respectively Oxen at those places at some time, giving you an indication of how deep the water is there).
The Oxford English dictionary was written by a Scotsman, which may account for the fact that they are the only people who pronounce English the way it is written.
I am from New England in the US and we have a lot of those same town names and pronounce them the same way. People outside of New England struggle with them when they are visiting. It's interesting to think about how the town names stayed the same even as so much of the rest of our pronunciations shifted over time.
The pronunciation of a lot of place names in England is quite different to the spelling: Bicester is Bis-Ter, not Bi-Ces-Ter Leominster is Lem-Ster, not Leo-Min-ster. Seems a bit bizarre 😜. There is a Leominster in MA USA, wonder how they pronounce it?
Hello fellow New Englander. I live just north of Boston in Medford, pronounced by us locals as Medfid which is just south of Stoneham, sometimes pronounced stone ham. Lol
A very balanced presentation, with focus on the language itself instead of the presenter herself :-) which I see often on those language channels :-) plus invaluable topographic information accompanying the names. Great job!
As a German, Leicester is the one that surprised me the most when I heard how it was supposed to be pronounced. Why bother putting all those letters there if u don't even use them... :D
A friend from London came to visit me in Boston. As I drove around, he pointed at highway signs and asked me to pronounce the names. I obliged, naming Stoneham, Deadham, Shrewsbury, Ipswich, Plymouth, Medford, Yarmouth, etc. When he asked me how I knew the “correct” pronunciations, I replied “There’s a reason why this is called New *England*.”
Some New England place names differ from the British pronunciation, though, like Leominster (we say "LEMMIN-ster", the Brits say "LEM-ster") and Warwick ("WAR-wick", "WAR-rick")
@@mnewell I'm from Connecticut, and I seem to remember that a friend of mine who lived in Massachusetts said Leominster was pronounced "Lem-ster". So that would have been VERY close to the British pronunciation.
I will always remember the ticket seller’s face when I asked, for the first time, a return ticket to Canterbury. I had to repeat it three times!!! Thanks to this wonderful lesson I have learnt to pronounce the names of English cities properly!!! Thank you.
That's brilliant! My books will be helpful for learning Russian and English. I published Transliterated russian dictionary with English translation. Compound words dictionary separated by tables. All details on my channel. Red velvet and Vanilla Gelato. Exercises for an interpreter. And also two copies of these books, where Russian words have given in Cyrillic.
@@MikhailSalynin - kind of slightly off the topic - but having lived in London, people would say: "return" (ticket) to somewhere, whereas here in the States we ('they", as I'm actually from Finland) say: "round trip" to somewhere. I thought that was hilarious at first. Being a foreign speaker in English language I was like: shoot, I have to learn the darn language twice! Trash is garbage, etc.
In the United States, specifically New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) you will find many towns with these names including Greenwich, Connecticut all of which are still pronounced the same as in Britain.
I'd say in some cases the same, in others similar but not exactly the same. For example places the end in "ham" emphasize the "h", and often "shire" is a distinct "shyer".
@@TrainsFerriesFeet And Greenwich, Connecticut, is pronounced the way the British pronounce it, but Greenwich, New York (near Albany), is GREEN-witch. Interestingly, while the Connecticut Greenwich is GREN-itch, the Connecticut Norwich is NOR-witch!
When I went to study in England many years ago, I learnt all of the names through the announcements in the trains. The woman would say the place's names repeatedly. The pronunciation shocked me and it was wild for me. I never realised I've been pronouncing things wrong.
Honestly, I believe that the differences in the pronunciation is just what evolved in each area. Hence the different pronunciations of the same suffix.
Thank you for this program. It was most needed for foreigners. You thought of the right thing to put it here and your method of teaching is also very simple, yet appealing like yourself. You're indeed very sweet. Bless you.
Huh, once I've finished learning all of this I realized, hey, I didn't visit the USofA bc of that orange mobster, and now the UK is of limits bc of Brexit ... *sigh*
One of the funniest and quickest responses ever on QI was by Bill Bailey. Rich Hall was talking about the many quiet, creepy villages with strange names (and equally odd pronunciations) up and down the UK. He said that somewhere there must be a village called SatanIsMyMaster. Quick as a flash, Bill (who's from the West Country) said, "It's pronounced 'Simster' " 🤣🤣🤣 Utterly brilliant! And it would probably be true, too!
It's because we have Brittonic, Pictish, Celtic, Roman, Viking (mostly Danish), Angle, Saxon and Norman French roots (and I've probably missed some tribes there). It's hardly surprising that our place names aren't phonetic.
And ones ending in 'ford' indicated there would have once literally been a 'ford' there. A 'ford' is where a stream is shallow enough to cross without using a boat or needing a bridge. In some parts of the country these 'fords' still exist...where a road will suddenly run THROUGH a stream at its shallowest point (e.g where a 'ford' is). This is absolutely true - I'm not making this up! Now you know something about places ending in 'ford'.........like Guildford (Surrey), Sleaford (Lincolnshire), and Hungerford (Berkshire), and where the term 'ford' originates from.
@@robtyman4281 There are some -ford placenames - at least in Devon and Cornwall - where ford simply means 'road'. Such place names as Sampford and Bellever (where -ver comes from -ford) on Dartmoor are examples. This maybe Celtic or have Celtic influence, though as ffordd in Welsh placenames means road.
"English Jade" is really sweet. I was told once, "The mind can only absorb what the seat of the pants can endure," & Ms. Jade went at a nice digestible clip in her presentation! Nice job!
Guildford is "the guilden ford" - the ford across the river Wey has a sandy bottom and therefore is "the golden ford". Nearby is "the shallow ford" - Shalford, and "the broad ford" - Broadford
@@nydirk 'The Omen' and it was only the cathedral scene that was filmed there. I was shocked to see a local landmark in such a scary film when I was 6 or 7.
Guildford is from Golden Ford, the golden being from the colour of the marigold flowers that used to grow in their thousands along the river banks, hundreds of years ago
A lot of English people (myself included) would pronounce Norwich with a 'ch' sound at the end, like Ipswich. The pronunciation with 'dzh' at the end is still used, but I think it is declining. The general tendency is for place names to be pronounced more like they are spelt, with some of the more obscure traditional pronunciations dying out. For example, the area of Marylebone in London used to be pronounced like 'Marbone', but nowadays it is usually 'Marri-le-bone', or occasionally 'Mar-le-bone'. But there are still plenty of oddities to trick foreigners, like Euston ('Youston'), Ruislip ('Ryeslip'), Beaulieu ('Byue-lee'), or Belvoir ('Beaver'). And of course Warwick ('Worrick')!
Yes. I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand which uses mostly English place names for its street names - being an English settlement. What's interesting, is that the English pronunciation of these names still persists - more precisely southern English pronunciation. It's true about the pronunciation of Shrewsbury (a street name here), it's a class thing - posh people say Shr'o'wsbury. The province of Canterbury, in which Christchurch is located is also pronounced as Canter'bri.'
@@MarkusQu more than one accepted pronunciation exists...I highly doubt whether locals will tear your head off if you stay with a "more logical" pronunciation of "green"
"Guildford, I don't know what's 'crossing' about that place" - the river Wey of course! A "ford" is a _water_ crossing (in Watford it's the Colne, in Dartford the Darent).
Something interesting is that Lichfield literally means "field of the dead", due to ~1000 Christians being martyred there during the reign of Diocletian in 300 A.D.
I like how she uses her hands to try to explain somehow all these weird twists and turns and then says something like "because that's how we say it." :-D
At first i would like to thank you a lot. I am muhammad from Egypt and i am studying pedagogy in faculty of education english depatment and i haven't ever hear the names of the towns from my professors. In fact i am so excited to visit England whatever the city 😂,and i wish to see you someday and have the honor to talk with you.
I learned this with my Phonetics teacher as part of my English teaching degree at Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil in the late 70's. It became my favourite subject in the whole four-year course! Proud of my country's tertiary education. We had no internet back then.
Here in the US, in Alabama, we have a city called Birmingham, and that's how we say it. And it's not a joke. 😆 So you should probably pronounce the US city that way if you are in the US. When in Rome...
@@JiFan as in siren. We are an old Roman town, we are the heart of the Cotswold’s , we have a Roman amphitheatre and the old Roman crossroads 😁 We’re also known as the most beautiful place to visit in the UK apparently
As an American who lived for a while around Newcastle upon Tyne, I naturally had to relearn a lot of pronunciations of place-names. I noticed quickly that the folks in the [broadly speaking] north are, for the most part, much more rhotic in their speech patterns. I noticed immediately your non-rhotic elocution which is the rule down south. This is quite the opposite of the way it is in the coastal states of America. The southern states are strongly rhotic, whereas the northern states, mostly New England, are quite non-rhotic. As a consequence, I learned to pronounce the "shire" suffix as "shur" with that strong R sound. Being from the American South, I found this to be quite natural. The same goes for all the place-names that end in "R". My (ex)wife grew up in and around Croydon, so she has that non-rhotic style of speech. She would pronounce Canterbury as "Cannabry." And don't get me started on the Geordie dialect. To me, that was a whole different [English] language. lol Another modifier I had to learn to contend with are place-names which are still pronounced with the same pronunciation that was prevalent before the Great Vowel Shift. Derby comes to mind in this regard. It took me a while to learn to pronounce Derby as "Darby." More than a few place-names in the UK still retain their pre-GVS pronunciations. The one thing though that really throws me off is the English habit of shortening place-names. North of Newcastle is the community (named for its famous castle) Alnwick. It took me a couple of years to learn that Alnwick is called "Annick" by all most everyone north of the Humber. That is the most memorable example I can think of at the moment.
The Newcastle dialect can be very challenging and one of the most difficult for foreigners to understand. I know, I’ve done business up there and quite a head scratcher at times.
@Jesus is God KAG your attitude toward the British people is not at all Christ-like (assuming you are a Christian). The English people have been speaking our language for around 1500 years, from its Anglo-Saxon (Old English) roots to the present Modern English we enjoy today! Meanwhile, our American English has only been distinct from British English for a bit more than 200 years. It was the British who spread the English language all around the globe over the past 300-400 years. American English has only become a major dialect of worldwide English since WWII. If anyone can claim ownership of the universal language of today's world, it is the British as well as the Americans, the Australians, the Canadians, and the New Zealanders. May I suggest that you look for UA-cam videos, Adventures in English, to gain a better understanding of the rich history of our shared language? I suspect your criticism is not linguistic in nature, rather methinks you have some grudge against the British people themselves. Long before I moved to England, I have had extensive experience with folks from that side of the Atlantic. I've always found them to be very friendly. When I moved to England back in 2007, I found people who loved me and readily took me in as friends. In all my travels around the UK, I found the same all over the island. Of course, there are a few people who have the same attitude against us Americans as you have against them. But they, at least those I met, are in the minority.
To help remember the pronunciation of "shire", think of "sheriff", which originally means "shire reeve", a reeve being a local official in charge of regal powers (order, justice, tax collection).
Absolutely! Many of our words and terms have roots in old English. Bonfire was originally a bone fire which was lit periodically to dispose of animal bones and garbage and mind your p's and q's arose from old barroom habits of watching your pints and quarts.
As an Australian I’ve found this very interesting. We speak English, but whenever I looked at a map of England, I never knew how to pronounce the names of places. 😕
Julie Englert , I am English , in England, and I still get surprised by some names. Not long ago I went to Ulgham pronounced to me by a local « Uffem »
Crypto Curious I was in Florida last year and someone asked where I’m from. When I said Plymouth, UK, she was very surprised and said oh we have a Plymouth too and thought it was a coincidence!
There's an etymological reason for the o-sound in Shrewsbury: It illustrates the changes in Old English words by Anglo-French scribes who could not pronounce them. Recorded 1016 as *_Scrobbesbyrig,_* it originally may have meant "the fortified place in (a district called) The Scrub." The initial consonant cluster was impossible for the scribes, who simplified it to sr-. The name was further changed by Anglo-French, both in vowels and consonants, but during all this, the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (as opposed to the French scribes) still pronounced it properly, and regular sound evolutions probably produced a pronunciation something like Shrobesbury (which turns up on a 1327 patent roll). After a predictable -b- to -v- (a vowel in the Middle Ages) to -u- shift, the modern spelling begins to emerge 14c. and is fully established 15c.
Hallands Menved I’m Australian, but in my travels in my yoof, I went to Shrewsbury quite a lot - en route by train to Ludlow, one of my favourite places - and some of the train announcements referred to it as Showsbury/Shrewsbury (can’t remember which, my yoof was a long while ago) ie the “R” sound omitted. I thought nothing off it, and just thought, okay, I misheard/local variation/announcer’s error. Years later, back in Sydney, I asked someone with whom I was working and who grew up in that area, about it, and she said that yes, some locals do use that pronunciation. Maybe she was just humouring me?
Terry Baby I have no local knowledge either way, but the muting or softening of one consonant in a triplet is common in many local dialects. Shr becoming sh is somewhat rare, though. But the name Shrewsbury is special and has been studied and debated quite extensively. Now I'm just an interested amateur, but I think the debate went a bit off track, becoming an academic arm-wrestling between only two possibles, either saxon and norman influence. I believe they overlooked the huge influx of Danish Vikings. The old danish, still discernible in western Jylland/Jutland, is very close to costal dialects in northern Britain, so close that fishermen without English or Danish respectively, could understand each other on the radio when I grew up in the sixties. And these dialects in mid-western Jutland are know for softening of consonants to the point of disappearance. Ulfborg normally is spoken with all consonants discernible, Ulf-borg. Not so by the locals, however. They say Oolboe - and that's a lot of consonants lost right there! 😂
From a fellow southerner and Guildfordian, to help you on this one: Guildford was originally 'Golden Ford', where the River Wey was forded. Golden I believe, after the yellow flowers that grew by the crossing.
Three more “difficult” places, especially for Asian people (and by Asian I mean anyone from the continent of Asia, and not the unofficial British “definition” of being Indian): 1. Marylebone. (Mar-le-buhn vs Mary-le-bone) 2. Edinburgh. (Edinbruh vs Edinburg) 3. Greenwich. (Grenich vs Green-wich). We Asians like to pronounce words exactly the way they are spelled 😅
As an American, I find this helpful too, because while we have a lot of the same place names (at least in writing), we say them differently, which endlessly amuses Brits. I'm also loving the VERY rhotic American imitation!
It's always odd coming from American English where we pronounce the majority of the letters to being in England and trying to translate what they call English now into what Americans call English. In America's defense the pronunciation of words in American English is closer to what it was 300 years ago in England than it is now. They changed more than we did.
Where in the States are you from? It’s interesting to me because I grew up in the mid-Atlantic and have family from the South. We pronounce cities like Birmingham and Durham just like the Brits.
@@fong03 my rule of pronunciatiin for places in the northeast tends to be pronounce it in the British way, in the south it tends to be more of the American phonetic pronunciation, but depends on who were the settlers there. In Texas we have southern pronunciation as well as German, Spanish and native American pronunciation
Good lesson! I'm Swedish but have always liked learning more English, ever since I was a kid. I find it very interesting to learn the small nuances of a language and how to pronounce words. For example, for a long time I thought the town Salisbury was pronounced "salis" (like "talis" in the word talisman). But then I discovered it should be pronounced the same way as the word "salsa". Salisbury, you never hear the letter "i". I also love different British accents like Liverpool scouse. It sounds so fun!
At a train station I once confirmed with a attendant if that was indeed the train to Amersham, which I pronounced as AMERS-ham, and she confirmed as AM-ershum.
Hello Jade! Thank you for your lessons, they are wonderfully clear. I'm a photographer and I have a suggestion. It seems one of your sources of lighting comes from below. Although in your case it's compensated by a second upper light, having a light from below always makes it for a slightly weird/unbecoming result. Anyhow, hats off to your channel, which I have been following for long, and thank you again!
I grew up in Massachusetts. The region was known as New England. Many of the place names came directly from England, some from Scotland and Ireland. As the lesson progressed it was apparent that I knew the preferred English pronunciation. English English certainly prevailed. I got 100%.
Coming back to that "HAM" thing. I am austrian, so I am more or less a german native speaker. I can say "I go home" in three different ways. 1.) Standard german: Ich gehe heim. 2.) older version: I geh hoam ( I is spoken like E in Easy) 3.) old version: I ge ham.
Mario indeed, the only person I ever knew from Bury pronounced it like that, just that nobody else I know does. Probably the football result announcers fault for that one!
Thank you Jade. Now I have found the relationships with some surnames: Otis Redding Richard Lester Gloster Meteor It has been so helpful! You're really great! PD: Another video on surnames would also be great but OMG! it is a huuuge world.
the settlement´s names are close to the german settlements names like ham/heim; bury/burg; wich/weig, wig; worth/werder, wörth; mouth we have at the baltic sea like warnemünde, travemünde, we also have towns with ing-suffix. But we have a commun pronounciation.
Very Saxon names & endings.....ie 'den', Debden/Dresden, Dingden etc, also 'ing' , Roding, Epping/Roding, Epping and Hereford/Herford (meaning "army/heer" crossing place ie of a river etc).
In Germany there are many cities ending with -heim so that might be the origin of -ham if it's Anglo-Saxon (last time the Saxons contributed sth useful language wise)
For a number of years I worked near Gloucester, I lost count of the number of times I heard U.S. visitors call it Glow-(to rhyme with cow)-sess-ter. In the the 1920's The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company changed it's name to The Gloster Aircraft Company because so many of it's foreign customers had trouble pronouncing and spelling the name.
As far as I know, the -ford is not just a crossing, it's a crossing over a river. In Watford, it would be the Coine, in Dartford the Darent (even giving the name to the place: Darent-ford), and in Guildford the Wey.
Watford: Water - ford. A place where you can cross the water since it is shallow. It is a natural place for a settlement. And the name of that village of the likes of "does anyone have an idea for the name? No one? Ok...."
I knew a lady from Cirencester (sadly she's no longer with us). She would have been most put out if someone who was not local called it Ciren - that was for the exclusive use of the locals.
I vaguely recall being told, many years ago, that Cirencester was sometimes shortened locally to sound more like Sisister. I sometimes use the Fosse Way, rather than the M5, and stop at Waitrose in Cirencester, as it's convenient (for a comfort stop), so I could enquire - and be prepared to be run out of town?
Thanks for this interesting lesson, dear Jade. Surprising, too! As a German, I find Shrewsbury the most difficult to pronounce😆 while Cirencester is unexpectedly easy.
Cheryl Graham I suspect the pronunciations are more accurate as they have likely been passed down through the generations before they were ever put down on paper (or parchment!).
Cheryl Graham Yes exactly. And I suspect that some of the spoken place names go way back to ancient settlements from even before the Romans arrived in AD63. They think that a lot of the Roman names for towns were probably taken from existing local names (except maybe where they built fortresses).
But I do hear Americans saying BirmingHam. ☺ I used to work in a hotel where occasionally we had Americans calling to cancel a booking because they thought we were located in Alabama. ☺
Please don't she wasn't being rude. It is simply what people say, not necessarily Americans either, you have some real tongue twister names out there too which I am sure we British pronounce badly. My favourite erroneously pronounced name is Worcestershire sauce. There are actually people over here that say Woostercestershire instead of Wooster too.
This could help a lot of people who are not natively speaking english. As always practise will help. I learned english in school more than 40 years ago in Denmark and have spoken english a lot in my life. I have found that at least back then there was a lot to desire in what we were taught. I usually ask someone I am speakig to if he or she would rectify my pronounciating if I am wrong. That has taught me a lot.
There was a young lady from Tottenham Manners? She'd none, or forgotten 'em During tea at the vicar's She whipped off her knickers Because, she said, she felt hot in' em.
You also have Bury itself, a town in Lancashire. Pronounced as it read by natives and surrounding areas, but becomes ' Berry' if people are posh or it's on the telly.
As I just said in a comment to Mr Craig Denno, I was born in Nuneaton and brought up in Atherstone (pron. A-the-stun, with a hard 'th'), but left the area 37 years ago for Bristle. During a visit to Bedworth a couple of years ago, I referred to the place as 'Bedduth' in conversation with a local and was lectured most severely.
I live in Gloucestershire, this is always mispronounced by non natives. We must face it that phonetic pronunciations based on spellings largely do not exist in this mad country😉. The word 'light' for example has an ancient gernanic root🙈. Anyone trying to learn this infuriatingly irregular language should be highly commended🙂
Even the English don't know how to pronounce English words, not a sign of a good language 😂. Went to Alnwick recently, had no clue what was silent or said as a different letter.
@@feynman6625 Still, hopefully the spelling reformers who want to abolish C, and have us writing such ghastly constructions as "Norrij" end up swinging next to the cash abolitionists, and self-driving car promoters. Forwards! Also, it is our destiny to colonise space.
Thank you so much. I really enjoy the lesson. Names of places are usually unique in the way they are pronounced and your explanation is very clear when there are alternatives.
Carla The Cosmic Traveller You think they’re hard?? Come to Australia and you will wonder what hit you. I am an Ozzie and even I have problems with town names. 😂
Andy Knowles you have to be proper thick to not understand that there are people from different countries who don’t know English pronunciation perfectly or do not have the ability to pronounce such words because their mouth is not trained to speak English. If you have nothing nice to say, what is the point in commenting? 🙄
mike saunders thanks Mike. So... Anglo-Saxon place names end in -ham, like Clapham, -stowe like Hawkstowe, and -ton like Brighton, and ending in 'ber', and 'ing'. The place names of the Scandinavians end in -by like Grimsby and Derby. The word 'by' is in Swedish / Dansk a small hamlet as opposed to a 'stad', which is a city. Sussex was in-fact a Viking controlled area, ‘Hove’ is old Norsk .
mike saunders thanks Mike. So... Anglo-Saxon place names end in -ham, like Clapham, -stowe like Hawkstowe, and -ton like Brighton, and ending in 'ber', and 'ing'. The place names of the Scandinavians end in -by like Grimsby and Derby. The word 'by' is in Swedish / Dansk a small hamlet as opposed to a 'stad', which is a city. Sussex was in-fact a Viking controlled area, ‘Hove’ is old Norsk .
I came here to learn how is the pronunciation of Bournemouth, now they are doing well in the premier and the coach is Spanish.😀Also good to know about how to say "Tottenham".
Having watched this and being an English native, I realise how difficult it must be for some! Another place near me is called Witham... which has a silent H, so it’s pronounced locally as ‘Witum’
A great introductory video. Learnt something new today. Didn’t know the true meanings behind all of those suffix’s. Leads you to develop a better understanding through personal research. Thank you.
In England, social class is still very important! A person's accent and vocabulary say a lot about their family background. Make sure to watch my new video about how posh people speak: ua-cam.com/video/gPqh9-gEYTY/v-deo.html
What's the definition of posh people?
I don’t live in Shrewsbury, but I have always said Shrows-bury
I noticed in no tme a new class that apparently spread across England and the UK like wildfire: chavs.
Do you have one with the shires, Edinburg, Loughborough, and Middlesbrough etc...😊
I'm from North Yorkshire, but moved to the USA as an adult 😊
We pronounced it Shroosbree, but I'm not posh 😄
I spoke to soon, and your next board was the big reveal 😂❤️
Reminds me of something my English teacher used to say:
"In English there are more exceptions than rules"
Haha, after about ten years of very active interest and trying to improve my English I can say he is so right!
My Science teacher told there are more Questions than answers
@@leebennett4117 English is a crap combination of other languages. I learned this helping a friend who taught English in China. I could not explain lots of things! Your science teacher was right.
@@leebennett4117 That must have been my he didn't teach English 😉
I can tell you it is the same with Swedish! Comes from all the influences the vikings brought from all over the world.
As a native German, I was able to guess the majority of meanings of those suffxies instantly. "-ham" is the equivalent to "heim" (eng.: home) in German, "-bury" to "burg" (eng. fort), "-field" to (the direct tanslation) "feld" and "-ford" to "furt" (eng. ford?; shallow area of a river) that are very popular suffixes for German towns as well as "-ing" (in Swabia more often "-ingen") for places named after a group/family of people. Pool is probably derived from "port", and "-mouth" sounds still very similar to the German "Mündung" (derived from Mund) of a river. So only -cester (ger. Kastell?), -shire, -worth and -which weren't self-explanatory suffixes to me.
Glad to see that their are still some "germanic" words (from Old Saxony) to be found in English today. It make the language feel much more familiar to Germans like me compared to romanian or slavic languages spoken in bordering countries - and probably the other way around, too, if any English native speakers are brave enough to put up with the articles, genders and cases of the German language... Beyond that, the vocabulary isn't that much different! :D
"Shire" could possibly be the German "Schar" a big number of persons, a clan, or a tribe (???).
It's amazing how German us English are lol
German suffixes are amusing because they sound like different English words. -heit (-hood) sounds like "height". (And -hood sounds like hood or hoodlum.) -schaft (-ship) sounds like "shaft".-ung (-ing) sounds uneducated. -tum (-dom) looks like tum/tummy (slang for stomach) or Tums (brand of tablets). And some words have one suffix in German but another in English.
And i live near Mannem (Mannheim, Germany)
-cester (and -caster) are from the Latin castrum meaning encampment and indicate that the town was Roman in origin.
3:15 AM
UA-cam : Instead of studying, do you want to learn this?
My brain : DEFINITELY YES.
What is this called, so that you would be studying THIS vid instead of something else? THATS what I want to do.
😂 im dead thx
"Difficult to pronounce placenames?"
Amateurs!!!! Said the Welshman
Shut up! Welsh doesn't count. We consider it to be hoof and mouth disease. 😜
What is supposed to be difficult in pronouncing "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch"? No problem at all! :D
@@michaelstadnikfilm nothing difficult with it, just don't forget to come up for air once or twice 😉
@@michaelstadnikfilm that's easy for you to say
You must admit, though, that Welsh pronunciation is far more logical than English - Welsh basically has rules that it sticks to.
“The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary.” ~ Dave Kellett
That is so true! More than people even realise.
As a German I thought of the cities named Schweinfurt and Ochsenfurt in Germany, when it came to the -ford‘s ( assuming (but not knowing) that the local pronounciation would be about the same in local German dialect as in English). (The river Main was presumably fordable / crossable with a herd of Swine respectively Oxen at those places at some time, giving you an indication of how deep the water is there).
Bullshit. 80% of the words come from Latin.
The Oxford English dictionary was written by a Scotsman, which may account for the fact that they are the only people who pronounce English the way it is written.
@@timflatus Here, have a thumbs up from a clueless ESLer.
I am from New England in the US and we have a lot of those same town names and pronounce them the same way. People outside of New England struggle with them when they are visiting. It's interesting to think about how the town names stayed the same even as so much of the rest of our pronunciations shifted over time.
The pronunciation of a lot of place names in England is quite different to the spelling:
Bicester is Bis-Ter, not Bi-Ces-Ter
Leominster is Lem-Ster, not Leo-Min-ster.
Seems a bit bizarre 😜.
There is a Leominster in MA USA, wonder how they pronounce it?
The same in Nova Scotia.
Hello fellow New Englander. I live just north of Boston in Medford, pronounced by us locals as Medfid which is just south of Stoneham, sometimes pronounced stone ham. Lol
Don’t forget Peabody. Pee biddy.
A very balanced presentation, with focus on the language itself instead of the presenter herself :-) which I see often on those language channels :-) plus invaluable topographic information accompanying the names. Great job!
Call me old fashioned but when a place name has three syllables and ends with -ham, I pronounce it 'ham'.
Indeed, although the presenter looks and sounds good to me. ;-)
SiliconBong you’re old fashioned
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.😉)
@@SiliconBong Nothing old fashioned about it. Brummies pronounce the "ham" . Only Londoners treat the h in ham as silent.
Ah yes, but then ‘up North’ people say Haitch for Aitch 😊
As a German, Leicester is the one that surprised me the most when I heard how it was supposed to be pronounced. Why bother putting all those letters there if u don't even use them... :D
wednesday says hello to you 😀😂
I agree, enree.
@@eff9266 Das is "mittwoch "
@@melrupp2129 , oh, let me ask, is woch a weak in deutsch?
@@eff9266 Woche = Week.
“Shrowsby” for the Posh... “Shrewsbury” for the rest of the Spice Girls
I know a lot of people in Shropshire, my family included, that pronounce is Shoesbury.
The majority of people brought up in the town like myself pronounce it Shoosbry with no r at the beginning
Dont bother with such distinctions in Dewsbury....its usually Doosberry
A friend from London came to visit me in Boston. As I drove around, he pointed at highway signs and asked me to pronounce the names. I obliged, naming Stoneham, Deadham, Shrewsbury, Ipswich, Plymouth, Medford, Yarmouth, etc. When he asked me how I knew the “correct” pronunciations, I replied “There’s a reason why this is called New *England*.”
I’m from medfid. I work in Southie
and also reading?
My first thought was if you're from Mass, you got no problem pronouncing them. All our towns/cities are either English or Native American.
Some New England place names differ from the British pronunciation, though, like Leominster (we say "LEMMIN-ster", the Brits say "LEM-ster") and Warwick ("WAR-wick", "WAR-rick")
@@mnewell I'm from Connecticut, and I seem to remember that a friend of mine who lived in Massachusetts said Leominster was pronounced "Lem-ster". So that would have been VERY close to the British pronunciation.
I will always remember the ticket seller’s face when I asked, for the first time, a return ticket to Canterbury. I had to repeat it three times!!! Thanks to this wonderful lesson I have learnt to pronounce the names of English cities properly!!! Thank you.
That's brilliant! My books will be helpful for learning Russian and English. I published Transliterated russian dictionary with English translation. Compound words dictionary separated by tables. All details on my channel. Red velvet and Vanilla Gelato. Exercises for an interpreter. And also two copies of these books, where Russian words have given in Cyrillic.
@@MikhailSalynin - kind of slightly off the topic - but having lived in London, people would say: "return" (ticket) to somewhere, whereas here in the States we ('they", as I'm actually from Finland) say: "round trip" to somewhere. I thought that was hilarious at first. Being a foreign speaker in English language I was like: shoot, I have to learn the darn language twice! Trash is garbage, etc.
In the United States, specifically New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) you will find many towns with these names including Greenwich, Connecticut all of which are still pronounced the same as in Britain.
Why is the second c in Connecticut silent?
@@pauljordan4452 Because it's easier to say, therefore became the preferred pronunciation. Also not how Americans pronounce "Antarctica."
I'd say in some cases the same, in others similar but not exactly the same. For example places the end in "ham" emphasize the "h", and often "shire" is a distinct "shyer".
There are a few hams versus ams in New England (Framingham for example is ham, but Hingham is am).
No, they're not pronounced the same in the USA. That's the point of her video.
I love it when you switch into an American accent, it makes me laugh at myself.
Sounds over the top to me.
BirmingHAAAM. DurHAAM
At least we say it right. 😏😉😂
@@pugnacious1 In the States we're inconsistent. BirmingHAM, Alabama is how most pronounce it, but Durham, NC is pronounced Dur-um.
@@TrainsFerriesFeet And Greenwich, Connecticut, is pronounced the way the British pronounce it, but Greenwich, New York (near Albany), is GREEN-witch. Interestingly, while the Connecticut Greenwich is GREN-itch, the Connecticut Norwich is NOR-witch!
@@TrainsFerriesFeet we say Birming-um in the uk.
When I went to study in England many years ago, I learnt all of the names through the announcements in the trains. The woman would say the place's names repeatedly. The pronunciation shocked me and it was wild for me. I never realised I've been pronouncing things wrong.
zaQba she says some of the wrong in my opinion. Like Holborn
So.... Did she belong to posh people catagory? 😉
@@anjalishejwalkar3400she is slightly posh but not upperclass
Honestly, I believe that the differences in the pronunciation is just what evolved in each area. Hence the different pronunciations of the same suffix.
and it gets more tricky when you go further North accent e.g scousers, geordies and especially scottish...
Thank you for this program. It was most needed for foreigners.
You thought of the right thing to put it here and your method of teaching is also very simple, yet appealing like yourself. You're indeed very sweet. Bless you.
Huh, once I've finished learning all of this I realized, hey, I didn't visit the USofA bc of that orange mobster, and now the UK is of limits bc of Brexit ... *sigh*
"The Ham stands powerfully and stressed by itself"
Me: Poor Ham! Don't stress out, we're with you!
West and East Ham were merged to create Newham where the ham is unstressed.
@@gregoryvnicholas Better send all the stressed ham to Newham then ;-)
And then we eat it!🙂
Its just short for Hammersmith
Lovely to know the meaning of those suffixes. Thank you for such a beautiful lesson, Jade. Warm regards to you all from Argentina 🇦🇷
Cirencester was actually the easiest one. I was surprised it is pronounced the way I would have pronounced it before hearing it.
I thought the same thing.
I always hear 'SORensester' for that town.
I remember hearing on the radio a long time back that there are several ways that Cirencester can be pronounced, including "Sis sister"
I like Towcester.
It sounds like a small kitchen appliance used to brown slices of bread.
I live in Cirencester lol we just call it Ciren 😂
“Ham” is the old word for home. In German it is “heim”, and in Scots it is “haim”.
In Norwegian it is ‘hjem’.
@@Bethi4WFH folkhemmet
in Dutch/Flemish we have countless cities or villages names ending on -hem or -gem (Zomergem , Landegem , Arnhem ...)
@@Bethi4WFH Or -heim in nynorsk.
@@Bethi4WFH In nynorsk: heim.
One of the funniest and quickest responses ever on QI was by Bill Bailey. Rich Hall was talking about the many quiet, creepy villages with strange names (and equally odd pronunciations) up and down the UK. He said that somewhere there must be a village called SatanIsMyMaster. Quick as a flash, Bill (who's from the West Country) said, "It's pronounced 'Simster' " 🤣🤣🤣 Utterly brilliant! And it would probably be true, too!
English, one of the most inconsistent languages I have ever learnt
Of course it is "inconsistent", we are a nation of bastards.
It's because we have Brittonic, Pictish, Celtic, Roman, Viking (mostly Danish), Angle, Saxon and Norman French roots (and I've probably missed some tribes there). It's hardly surprising that our place names aren't phonetic.
@@penname5766 Very good point. But you left out the Jutes, we hate Anglo-Saxons.
Spike Here Haha, I knew I'd forgotten at least one!
@@penname5766 Don't worry we don't bear grudges down in the Kingdom of Kent. As long as you're NOT an Anglo-Saxon.
All cities which end in -caster, -cester, -chester (from the latin castrum) were founded by the Romans.
And ones ending in 'ford' indicated there would have once literally been a 'ford' there. A 'ford' is where a stream is shallow enough to cross without using a boat or needing a bridge. In some parts of the country these 'fords' still exist...where a road will suddenly run THROUGH a stream at its shallowest point (e.g where a 'ford' is). This is absolutely true - I'm not making this up! Now you know something about places ending in 'ford'.........like Guildford (Surrey), Sleaford (Lincolnshire), and Hungerford (Berkshire), and where the term 'ford' originates from.
Chester...Roman fort.
@@robtyman4281 Thanks Rob, I was going to post that but couldn't be bothered.
@@robtyman4281 There are some -ford placenames - at least in Devon and Cornwall - where ford simply means 'road'. Such place names as Sampford and Bellever (where -ver comes from -ford) on Dartmoor are examples. This maybe Celtic or have Celtic influence, though as ffordd in Welsh placenames means road.
She should have included Towcester. :) ..... Yes, it's pronounced as a homophone of "toaster"!
"English Jade" is really sweet. I was told once, "The mind can only absorb what the seat of the pants can endure," & Ms. Jade went at a nice digestible clip in her presentation! Nice job!
Very interesting to have the history lesson of what these suffixes alluded to. Thank you.
Guildford is "the guilden ford" - the ford across the river Wey has a sandy bottom and therefore is "the golden ford". Nearby is "the shallow ford" - Shalford, and "the broad ford" - Broadford
And Guildford is where they filmed "The Oman."
Jim Kemp no idea mate - don’t go south of the river!
To be honest, the only reason I have ever heard of Guildford is because that's the place Ford Prefect didn't come from after all...
@@nydirk 'The Omen' and it was only the cathedral scene that was filmed there. I was shocked to see a local landmark in such a scary film when I was 6 or 7.
Guildford is from Golden Ford, the golden being from the colour of the marigold flowers that used to grow in their thousands along the river banks, hundreds of years ago
Fine, I'll name a pet with the spelling "Steve" but it's actually pronounced as "John"
Or Sean pronounced as Shawn and not Seen.
@@awdrifter3394 or irish(!) Sean's girlfriend Siobhan.
@@awdrifter3394 Shawn, pronounced /siːn/
Maybe you could call your pet ghoti "Steve".
@@takix2007 I just call everything and everyone Dave. Saves a lot of hassle...
I’m from Shrewsbury, I pronounce it “shoosebri”
paul blakeway No “r” sound?
@@chrisjuravich3398 nope but i guess if i were to say it properly rather than lazily, then id say Shrewsbury
So many regional differences and accents. The Yorkshire twang is totally different from London. Or the West Country.
You choose Brie?
I pronounce it Shrowsbri (Birmingham)
A lot of English people (myself included) would pronounce Norwich with a 'ch' sound at the end, like Ipswich. The pronunciation with 'dzh' at the end is still used, but I think it is declining. The general tendency is for place names to be pronounced more like they are spelt, with some of the more obscure traditional pronunciations dying out. For example, the area of Marylebone in London used to be pronounced like 'Marbone', but nowadays it is usually 'Marri-le-bone', or occasionally 'Mar-le-bone'. But there are still plenty of oddities to trick foreigners, like Euston ('Youston'), Ruislip ('Ryeslip'), Beaulieu ('Byue-lee'), or Belvoir ('Beaver'). And of course Warwick ('Worrick')!
No need to explain - the suffixes ALL mean "place where it rains cats & dogs"🤣☔
Good job
@@pluffer96 please tell us! I genuinely don’t know (Spanish speaking persone here)
With the names ending in "-wich", she should have included Greenwich, pronounced "grennitch" -- a short "e" and no "w".
Yes. I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand which uses mostly English place names for its street names - being an English settlement. What's interesting, is that the English pronunciation of these names still persists - more precisely southern English pronunciation. It's true about the pronunciation of Shrewsbury (a street name here), it's a class thing - posh people say Shr'o'wsbury. The province of Canterbury, in which Christchurch is located is also pronounced as Canter'bri.'
Wait: GMT is pronounced "Grennitsch Mean Time"? Did it wrong all my life :)
@@MarkusQu more than one accepted pronunciation exists...I highly doubt whether locals will tear your head off if you stay with a "more logical" pronunciation of "green"
I wonder how she could forgot Greenwitch... oops, Grennitch.
Except Nantwich
"Guildford, I don't know what's 'crossing' about that place" - the river Wey of course! A "ford" is a _water_ crossing (in Watford it's the Colne, in Dartford the Darent).
Kilian Hekhuis • towns ending in -fort in the Netherlands also mean a place a to wade through water.
@@eleo_b Indeed, I even live in one :)
@@kilianhekhuis | Your surname sounds Dutch by the way? "
@@eleo_b It sure does, can't get more Dutch with it (my first name's just a disguise, I'm very Dutch indeed).
@@kilianhekhuis Ah, I see. The Kilian threw me off.
The name is spelled "Throatwarbler Mangrove" but is pronounced "Luxury Yacht".
😂
🤣🤣🤣😍😍😍
😂
Brilliant!
NO IT ISN'T!
Something interesting is that Lichfield literally means "field of the dead", due to ~1000 Christians being martyred there during the reign of Diocletian in 300 A.D.
Folk etymology, not substantiated, not correct.
@@richardstubbs6484 cool story bro, unfortunately it seems I don't care hehe xD
@@nuclearpiez2986 you don't care about being wrong? You must be an "American "
@@kenhur9800 I'm Bri'ish actually
@@nuclearpiez2986 obviously not a very fanatic Briton
Great teacher! Amazing concentration skills and subtle sense of humour. A true source of inspiration for many of us (fellow teachers).
I like how she uses her hands to try to explain somehow all these weird twists and turns and then says something like "because that's how we say it." :-D
At first i would like to thank you a lot. I am muhammad from Egypt and i am studying pedagogy in faculty of education english depatment and i haven't ever hear the names of the towns from my professors. In fact i am so excited to visit England whatever the city 😂,and i wish to see you someday and have the honor to talk with you.
I learned this with my Phonetics teacher as part of my English teaching degree at Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil in the late 70's.
It became my favourite subject in the whole four-year course! Proud of my country's tertiary education. We had no internet back then.
I live in Shrewsbury in Nigeria.😋 Thank you so much ever for the lesson, teacher. Love from Nigeria 🇳🇬
Lol. Which state in Nigeria is it?
@@youtubeowl9544 I often go shopping in EASTLEIGH in Kenya's capital.😊
Do you say shrew or shrow?
@@youtubeowl9544 just joking with you all, all right!
@@dulciemidwinter5990 Shrewsbury 😍
She speaks very clearly and distinctly, and not quickly. It's very easy to understand her explanations
Thanks for explaining to everyone how to pronounce all of our New England towns! ;-)
"The Ham stands powerfully and stressed by itself"
Ola Bergvall The Ham shall raise again and overwhelm the Earth with its splendour
Dont we all lol
LOL!
Insensible.b
🤣😁
"burr-ming-HAEEAAMM 😬"
i spat my coffee laughing
Hello 👋 how are you doing today
Here in the US, in Alabama, we have a city called Birmingham, and that's how we say it. And it's not a joke. 😆 So you should probably pronounce the US city that way if you are in the US. When in Rome...
@@maureentopper3741 I'd like to know more about you if you don't mind
@@maureentopper3741 just a random observation, your profile picture looks a bit like a very attractive blonde professor Snape (Alan Rickman). 😁😁☺️
I live in Cirencester, we don’t call it “sista “ we call it Ciren.
As in see-ren or psy-ren? And what's nice there..? Anything of interest? 🙂
@@JiFan as in siren.
We are an old Roman town, we are the heart of the Cotswold’s , we have a Roman amphitheatre and the old Roman crossroads 😁
We’re also known as the most beautiful place to visit in the UK apparently
@@Samantha-wg9qu That's awesome! Would love to go sometime when borders open... 😊
Hello 👋 how are you doing today
@@jamesjames5484 I’m good thank you, how are you?
As an American who lived for a while around Newcastle upon Tyne, I naturally had to relearn a lot of pronunciations of place-names. I noticed quickly that the folks in the [broadly speaking] north are, for the most part, much more rhotic in their speech patterns. I noticed immediately your non-rhotic elocution which is the rule down south. This is quite the opposite of the way it is in the coastal states of America. The southern states are strongly rhotic, whereas the northern states, mostly New England, are quite non-rhotic. As a consequence, I learned to pronounce the "shire" suffix as "shur" with that strong R sound. Being from the American South, I found this to be quite natural. The same goes for all the place-names that end in "R". My (ex)wife grew up in and around Croydon, so she has that non-rhotic style of speech. She would pronounce Canterbury as "Cannabry." And don't get me started on the Geordie dialect. To me, that was a whole different [English] language. lol
Another modifier I had to learn to contend with are place-names which are still pronounced with the same pronunciation that was prevalent before the Great Vowel Shift. Derby comes to mind in this regard. It took me a while to learn to pronounce Derby as "Darby." More than a few place-names in the UK still retain their pre-GVS pronunciations. The one thing though that really throws me off is the English habit of shortening place-names. North of Newcastle is the community (named for its famous castle) Alnwick. It took me a couple of years to learn that Alnwick is called "Annick" by all most everyone north of the Humber. That is the most memorable example I can think of at the moment.
Did you ever go to Ulgham?
@@alanmcdonald4423 no. I actually had to look Ulgnam up. The closest I've been is Morpeth.
@@alanmcdonald4423 Place/Village of the owls,Pronounced Ulffam, But the l is nigh on silent. Ul/Owl .
The Newcastle dialect can be very challenging and one of the most difficult for foreigners to understand. I know, I’ve done business up there and quite a head scratcher at times.
@Jesus is God KAG your attitude toward the British people is not at all Christ-like (assuming you are a Christian). The English people have been speaking our language for around 1500 years, from its Anglo-Saxon (Old English) roots to the present Modern English we enjoy today! Meanwhile, our American English has only been distinct from British English for a bit more than 200 years. It was the British who spread the English language all around the globe over the past 300-400 years. American English has only become a major dialect of worldwide English since WWII. If anyone can claim ownership of the universal language of today's world, it is the British as well as the Americans, the Australians, the Canadians, and the New Zealanders. May I suggest that you look for UA-cam videos, Adventures in English, to gain a better understanding of the rich history of our shared language?
I suspect your criticism is not linguistic in nature, rather methinks you have some grudge against the British people themselves. Long before I moved to England, I have had extensive experience with folks from that side of the Atlantic. I've always found them to be very friendly. When I moved to England back in 2007, I found people who loved me and readily took me in as friends. In all my travels around the UK, I found the same all over the island. Of course, there are a few people who have the same attitude against us Americans as you have against them. But they, at least those I met, are in the minority.
To help remember the pronunciation of "shire", think of "sheriff", which originally means "shire reeve", a reeve being a local official in charge of regal powers (order, justice, tax collection).
Absolutely! Many of our words and terms have roots in old English. Bonfire was originally a bone fire which was lit periodically to dispose of animal bones and garbage and mind your p's and q's arose from old barroom habits of watching your pints and quarts.
@@thomastrout9997 I didn't know that one :-) I would have assumed it was mixing French "bon" et "fire", since the equivalent is "feu de joie" ^^
I was surprised how she pronounced "shire" as someone from one of those shire places. I actually say it as "sha" because of my accent
As an Australian I’ve found this very interesting. We speak English, but whenever I looked at a map of England, I never knew how to pronounce the names of places. 😕
Julie Englert , I am English , in England, and I still get surprised by some names. Not long ago I went to Ulgham pronounced to me by a local « Uffem »
We Americans have problems with them too and we stole the names for our own use and pronunciation.
Crypto Curious I was in Florida last year and someone asked where I’m from. When I said Plymouth, UK, she was very surprised and said oh we have a Plymouth too and thought it was a coincidence!
@Toxophilus indomitus your keyboard is broken mate!
@Toxophilus indomitus I LOVE THAT CITY!
Am from the Philippines and its amazing to learn different english places pronounciation. Hoping someday, will have to visit those places. ♥️
There's an etymological reason for the o-sound in Shrewsbury:
It illustrates the changes in Old English words by Anglo-French scribes who could not pronounce them. Recorded 1016 as *_Scrobbesbyrig,_* it originally may have meant "the fortified place in (a district called) The Scrub."
The initial consonant cluster was impossible for the scribes, who simplified it to sr-.
The name was further changed by Anglo-French, both in vowels and consonants, but during all this, the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (as opposed to the French scribes) still pronounced it properly, and regular sound evolutions probably produced a pronunciation something like Shrobesbury (which turns up on a 1327 patent roll).
After a predictable -b- to -v- (a vowel in the Middle Ages) to -u- shift, the modern spelling begins to emerge 14c. and is fully established 15c.
RTPSEV Sorry, but such matters have always fascinated me...
Hallands Menved I’m Australian, but in my travels in my yoof, I went to Shrewsbury quite a lot - en route by train to Ludlow, one of my favourite places - and some of the train announcements referred to it as Showsbury/Shrewsbury (can’t remember which, my yoof was a long while ago) ie the “R” sound omitted. I thought nothing off it, and just thought, okay, I misheard/local variation/announcer’s error.
Years later, back in Sydney, I asked someone with whom I was working and who grew up in that area, about it, and she said that yes, some locals do use that pronunciation. Maybe she was just humouring me?
Terry Baby I have no local knowledge either way, but the muting or softening of one consonant in a triplet is common in many local dialects.
Shr becoming sh is somewhat rare, though. But the name Shrewsbury is special and has been studied and debated quite extensively.
Now I'm just an interested amateur, but I think the debate went a bit off track, becoming an academic arm-wrestling between only two possibles, either saxon and norman influence.
I believe they overlooked the huge influx of Danish Vikings. The old danish, still discernible in western Jylland/Jutland, is very close to costal dialects in northern Britain, so close that fishermen without English or Danish respectively, could understand each other on the radio when I grew up in the sixties.
And these dialects in mid-western Jutland are know for softening of consonants to the point of disappearance. Ulfborg normally is spoken with all consonants discernible, Ulf-borg.
Not so by the locals, however. They say Oolboe - and that's a lot of consonants lost right there! 😂
So then at the time of the Caedfael novels by Ellis Peters (1140s/50s), it would still be Scrobbesbyrig to a common monk.
jdcunnington Probably, unless he happened to be imported from Normandy 😉
From a fellow southerner and Guildfordian, to help you on this one:
Guildford was originally 'Golden Ford', where the River Wey was forded. Golden I believe, after the yellow flowers that grew by the crossing.
In Milton Keynes, there is Broughton, Loughton and Woughton - the 'Brough' - is like 'raw', the 'Lough' is like 'now' and the 'Wough' is like 'stuff'.
gillian bc stuff? How?
Great examples of variances. The language is much more fluid than our presenter allows.
elsa Grace like in rough and enough
My favorite example is the actress Moon Bloodgood - three double-os, each pronounced differently.
Milton Keynes! Somebody is paying attention to the idiots in the world.
Three more “difficult” places, especially for Asian people (and by Asian I mean anyone from the continent of Asia, and not the unofficial British “definition” of being Indian):
1. Marylebone. (Mar-le-buhn vs Mary-le-bone)
2. Edinburgh. (Edinbruh vs Edinburg)
3. Greenwich. (Grenich vs Green-wich).
We Asians like to pronounce words exactly the way they are spelled 😅
Letters are pronounced differently in different languages and the English adopted foreign pronunciation and spelling.
As an American, I find this helpful too, because while we have a lot of the same place names (at least in writing), we say them differently, which endlessly amuses Brits. I'm also loving the VERY rhotic American imitation!
It's always odd coming from American English where we pronounce the majority of the letters to being in England and trying to translate what they call English now into what Americans call English. In America's defense the pronunciation of words in American English is closer to what it was 300 years ago in England than it is now. They changed more than we did.
Where in the States are you from? It’s interesting to me because I grew up in the mid-Atlantic and have family from the South. We pronounce cities like Birmingham and Durham just like the Brits.
@@fong03 like Aquaman?
@@garystefan3995 🤦🏾♂️
@@fong03 my rule of pronunciatiin for places in the northeast tends to be pronounce it in the British way, in the south it tends to be more of the American phonetic pronunciation, but depends on who were the settlers there. In Texas we have southern pronunciation as well as German, Spanish and native American pronunciation
Good lesson! I'm Swedish but have always liked learning more English, ever since I was a kid. I find it very interesting to learn the small nuances of a language and how to pronounce words. For example, for a long time I thought the town Salisbury was pronounced "salis" (like "talis" in the word talisman). But then I discovered it should be pronounced the same way as the word "salsa". Salisbury, you never hear the letter "i". I also love different British accents like Liverpool scouse. It sounds so fun!
Я цыган 😮😊 мне 32 и я это спизжу
Strangest place name pronunciation I’ve heard lately is Hawick in Scotland, pronounced as Oik.
Wymondham in Norfolk is another strange one, it's pronounced as Windum.
Speaking of good Scottish place names there's only one way to pronounce Twatt !
Or Milngavie, pronounced Mull-guy
Godmanchester is Gumster
I thought Milngavie too. I grew up near there. Strangely the station announcements say Mil-guy but locals all say mul-guy.
The teacher for me. Good lesson. 300 years ago changed.
Thank you for this lesson, you beautiful English rose.
I love that you’ve included my wonderful home town Shrewsbury. And you are right, the posh say Srohsbrie, the not so posh say Shoosbree
Yep like those that put an R in Bath. Barth 😂
At a train station I once confirmed with a attendant if that was indeed the train to Amersham, which I pronounced as AMERS-ham, and she confirmed as AM-ershum.
This is brilliant. For an Indian who works with English clients this is really useful to me.
Simply love your lesson...as a non-native it's always hard to guess the correct pronunciation. Thanks.
Hello 👋 how are you doing today
@@jamesjames5484 good. Just waiting for more lessons.
@@claricevercelhese95 I'd like to know more about you if you don't mind 🙂
@@jamesjames5484 sorry but I mind.
@@claricevercelhese95 my email is on my channel
Hello Jade! Thank you for your lessons, they are wonderfully clear.
I'm a photographer and I have a suggestion. It seems one of your sources of lighting comes from below. Although in your case it's compensated by a second upper light, having a light from below always makes it for a slightly weird/unbecoming result.
Anyhow, hats off to your channel, which I have been following for long, and thank you again!
Greetings from Massachusetts! 😃 We have many of the same town names. I pronounce them the same way that you do 😉. Gloucester=glosster. Nice video
Glosster now? When I was living there it was pronounced "glawsta".
I agree with you Silver Foxy, that is why I can understand people who are from Massachusetts and I live in the state of Victoria in Australia.
Edward Miessner Ha! Me too! From Worcester “wistah” to the locals.
@@johninitaly Used to work for a gentleman named "Worcester" originally from the North East. He pronounced it "Wo stah"!
ok, so how do you pronounce schedule? I've never heard it pronounced right from the states and it doesn't contain the letter K
I grew up in Massachusetts. The region was known as New England. Many of the place names came directly from England, some from Scotland and Ireland. As the lesson progressed it was apparent that I knew the preferred English pronunciation. English English certainly prevailed. I got 100%.
Ты на каком рассказываешь
Или что ту курил, поделись!!!
According to Monty Python, Norwich is code for "Knickers off ready when I come home".
Brilliant!
Norwich (sometimes pronounced "Naaarge") is also quite handy for Sandringham...
I don't think it was Monty Python. I think it was Allen Bennet and co.
😆
As I'm watching this, I have a 'am sandich in me murth, and redding the news about Manster United bri'ing Liverpu.
Coming back to that "HAM" thing. I am austrian, so I am more or less a german native speaker. I can say "I go home" in three different ways.
1.) Standard german: Ich gehe heim.
2.) older version: I geh hoam ( I is spoken like E in Easy)
3.) old version: I ge ham.
Very useful, since I’m an American working for a British company, and I only knew about half of this. Thanks!
Actually a lot of people in Kent will pronounce "bury" suffixed names as "berry" e.g.Canterberry, Glastonberry etc
And Bury, the place, is pronounced Berry (by most people).
Of course, there are a large number of people in Kent who hate being described as Anglo-Saxons, but that would just confuse things.
@@barbarachristina2026 Hahaha. I think that the land of the East Saxons is closer to the East End than Kent is.
Mario indeed, the only person I ever knew from Bury pronounced it like that, just that nobody else I know does. Probably the football result announcers fault for that one!
I always say Brie for things like Canter-Brie. But I have family from Bury St Endmonds and they call it Berry.
Thank you Jade. Now I have found the relationships with some surnames:
Otis Redding
Richard Lester
Gloster Meteor
It has been so helpful! You're really great!
PD: Another video on surnames would also be great but OMG! it is a huuuge world.
the settlement´s names are close to the german settlements names like ham/heim; bury/burg; wich/weig, wig; worth/werder, wörth; mouth we have at the baltic sea like warnemünde, travemünde, we also have towns with ing-suffix. But we have a commun pronounciation.
Very Saxon names & endings.....ie 'den', Debden/Dresden, Dingden etc, also 'ing' , Roding, Epping/Roding, Epping and Hereford/Herford (meaning "army/heer" crossing place ie of a river etc).
In Germany there are many cities ending with -heim so that might be the origin of -ham if it's Anglo-Saxon (last time the Saxons contributed sth useful language wise)
It is. Meaning 'home'
So Anaheim means Ana's home? 😄😄
@@JiFan very possibly. Look it up.
For a number of years I worked near Gloucester, I lost count of the number of times I heard U.S. visitors call it Glow-(to rhyme with cow)-sess-ter. In the the 1920's The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company changed it's name to The Gloster Aircraft Company because so many of it's foreign customers had trouble pronouncing and spelling the name.
Not the ones who are from Gloucester Massachusetts. They say it like the Brits. Same goes for Durham, North Carolina.
@@goodi2shooz I remember seeing a bumper sticker when driving in Connecticut (Conneticut?) some years ago: it read, "I (heart) New Hampsha."
As far as I know, the -ford is not just a crossing, it's a crossing over a river. In Watford, it would be the Coine, in Dartford the Darent (even giving the name to the place: Darent-ford), and in Guildford the Wey.
In german a Furt is a shallow spot to cross the river , like in Frankfurt,Schweinfurt…..
Watford: Water - ford. A place where you can cross the water since it is shallow. It is a natural place for a settlement. And the name of that village of the likes of "does anyone have an idea for the name? No one? Ok...."
@@michaelmuller6890 В русском языке- брод.
We shorten Cirencester to ciren actually as a local I’ve never hear the other way ever being used
I knew a lady from Cirencester (sadly she's no longer with us). She would have been most put out if someone who was not local called it Ciren - that was for the exclusive use of the locals.
Even I, from a totally non english speaking foreign country, thought wouldn't it be logical to just shorten it to Ciren 😂😂
I came here to say the exact same thing! Who has every shortened it to “cester”?!
I vaguely recall being told, many years ago, that Cirencester was sometimes shortened locally to sound more like Sisister.
I sometimes use the Fosse Way, rather than the M5, and stop at Waitrose in Cirencester, as it's convenient (for a comfort stop), so I could enquire - and be prepared to be run out of town?
@Joshua Rainbird That IS local ha ha
Thanks for this interesting lesson, dear Jade. Surprising, too! As a German, I find Shrewsbury the most difficult to pronounce😆 while Cirencester is unexpectedly easy.
I totally disagree. It's unfair and should officially be banned to pronounce an English place name the obvious and expected way!
@@thephidias Try 'Higham'.
@@ddempsey9642 huh?
This is so interesting!!! Not only in how theyre pronounced but the meaning of the suffixes
never been there but it is known by me through the books of Ellis Peeters , about a detective monk in Middle Ages named Cadfaël ...
about Shrewsbury
Little note on Norwich and Bournemouth: down here even further south than london it's commonly pronounced as Norich and Bourmuth
AFC Bourmuth vs Norich City
Cheryl Graham I suspect the pronunciations are more accurate as they have likely been passed down through the generations before they were ever put down on paper (or parchment!).
Cheryl Graham Yes exactly. And I suspect that some of the spoken place names go way back to ancient settlements from even before the Romans arrived in AD63. They think that a lot of the Roman names for towns were probably taken from existing local names (except maybe where they built fortresses).
Or Bommuff
@Cheryl Graham I love confusing the tourists with Whymondham and Happisburgh.
Every time she said “An American might say” I took personally.
Burming-HAM!
Your problem
But I do hear Americans saying BirmingHam. ☺ I used to work in a hotel where occasionally we had Americans calling to cancel a booking because they thought we were located in Alabama. ☺
@@mmz5076 We do say Birming-ham, (Alabama) but not the way she said it.
Please don't she wasn't being rude. It is simply what people say, not necessarily Americans either, you have some real tongue twister names out there too which I am sure we British pronounce badly. My favourite erroneously pronounced name is Worcestershire sauce. There are actually people over here that say Woostercestershire instead of Wooster too.
This could help a lot of people who are not natively speaking english. As always practise will help. I learned english in school more than 40 years ago in Denmark and have spoken english a lot in my life. I have found that at least back then there was a lot to desire in what we were taught. I usually ask someone I am speakig to if he or she would rectify my pronounciating if I am wrong. That has taught me a lot.
There was a young lady from Tottenham
Manners? She'd none, or forgotten 'em
During tea at the vicar's
She whipped off her knickers
Because, she said, she felt hot in' em.
More!
Brilliant!
The 'Cantubree' Tales?
Initially, I wondered if it was "the vicar's knickers" that got ripped off, but then I scrolled down...
Gota love limericks!
Thank you so much. Your lesson is very clear and I've learnt a lot today.
Hello 👋 how are you doing today
2:57 "Well there's nothing really to say that's special about Wrexham" 😂
Allan Dawson lol I know I pissed myself!
How about "It's not an English town?"
Maybe it's because its a Welsh town.
I like your UK accent very much ， your voice is so warm and sweet, and make me easy to understand too, big thanks !
Also funfact: Birmingham and Nottingham have _both_ the -ing and -ham suffix.
Yes, they are the HOMES of the Birm and Nott PEOPLE.
@@barbarachristina2026 - and SALOP for Shropshire
And another fun fact: Nottingham used to be Snottingham. There's still an area in the middle that's called Sneinton.
How about places with -borough? As a Filipino visiting the UK, I was surprised that Farnborough is pronounced as "farnbra"!
So it happens with Loughborough which pronounces “luhfbra”
Scarborough sounds Scarbra too 😆
@@cellohoch trueee
Get rid of all of the letters.
Scarbra. Edinbra
You also have Bury itself, a town in Lancashire. Pronounced as it read by natives and surrounding areas, but becomes ' Berry' if people are posh or it's on the telly.
I'm learning Old English right now. Videos like these are very helpful!
Someone from Bedworth told me that the traditional pronunciation is “Bedduth”
As I just said in a comment to Mr Craig Denno, I was born in Nuneaton and brought up in Atherstone (pron. A-the-stun, with a hard 'th'), but left the area 37 years ago for Bristle. During a visit to Bedworth a couple of years ago, I referred to the place as 'Bedduth' in conversation with a local and was lectured most severely.
I was born there and lived there for 40 years and "Beduff" is the way people local say it.
This is the cutest thing I've ever seen :) I would add Loughborough to this mix as that one threw me the first time.
Know some Aussies who pronounce it Luger barruger
@@paultootill7062 lol😂
I live in Gloucestershire, this is always mispronounced by non natives. We must face it that phonetic pronunciations based on spellings largely do not exist in this mad country😉. The word 'light' for example has an ancient gernanic root🙈. Anyone trying to learn this infuriatingly irregular language should be highly commended🙂
She is one of the best teacher of English language in England
Thanks for that and I had four more: Twickenham, Marylebone, Cholmondeley, Barnstaple
That cholmondeley I would’ve liked hearing the origin and pronunciation.. I believe it’s pronounced nothing like it looks.
English is so amazing -- the way its written is always just a rough guide to how it is pronouced :D
When it comes to spelling, english is not amazing, it's stupid.
Even the English don't know how to pronounce English words, not a sign of a good language 😂. Went to Alnwick recently, had no clue what was silent or said as a different letter.
@@feynman6625 Still, hopefully the spelling reformers who want to abolish C, and have us writing such ghastly constructions as "Norrij" end up swinging next to the cash abolitionists, and self-driving car promoters. Forwards!
Also, it is our destiny to colonise space.
Hello 👋 how are you doing today
"The ham stands powerfully" killed me.
Thank you so much. I really enjoy the lesson. Names of places are usually unique in the way they are pronounced and your explanation is very clear when there are alternatives.
Very useful lesson. But 9:58 "Worcester" is spelled wrong on the whiteboard.
Yes, it's a mistake on the board.
Yes I noticed that too. Also Cester comes from the Latin castra meaning a camp.
Ah great lesson! British town and city names can be so difficult to know how to pronounce!
Carla The Cosmic Traveller You think they’re hard?? Come to Australia and you will wonder what hit you. I am an Ozzie and even I have problems with town names. 😂
You have to be proper kind of thick not too be able pronouce those names.
Andy Knowles you have to be proper thick to not understand that there are people from different countries who don’t know English pronunciation perfectly or do not have the ability to pronounce such words because their mouth is not trained to speak English. If you have nothing nice to say, what is the point in commenting? 🙄
You have missed the norsk ones; ‘Ton’ as in Brighton : means town, then there is ‘by’ as in Grimsby.
'by' can mean either settlement or farmland
It would have been an opportunity to say bee a lot.
Ton is not Norse,its Old English,but 'By' definitely is.Half the towns in eastern England end in 'By' and the same is true in Denmark.
mike saunders thanks Mike. So... Anglo-Saxon place names end in -ham, like Clapham, -stowe like Hawkstowe, and -ton like Brighton, and ending in 'ber', and 'ing'. The place names of the Scandinavians end in -by like Grimsby and Derby. The word 'by' is in Swedish / Dansk a small hamlet as opposed to a 'stad', which is a city. Sussex was in-fact a Viking controlled area, ‘Hove’ is old Norsk .
mike saunders thanks Mike. So... Anglo-Saxon place names end in -ham, like Clapham, -stowe like Hawkstowe, and -ton like Brighton, and ending in 'ber', and 'ing'. The place names of the Scandinavians end in -by like Grimsby and Derby. The word 'by' is in Swedish / Dansk a small hamlet as opposed to a 'stad', which is a city. Sussex was in-fact a Viking controlled area, ‘Hove’ is old Norsk .
I came here to learn how is the pronunciation of Bournemouth, now they are doing well in the premier and the coach is Spanish.😀Also good to know about how to say "Tottenham".
I lived in a village called RIpley in North Yorkshire just found out rip means by water and ley means forest clearing in anglo Saxon
So, does it imply/mean forest by water?
@@conitorres9774 yes it could as the land a round ripley was once a part of the knesbough forest that covered the area
@@notmissingout9369 thank you for the clarification
Thank you so much Jade, I am learning a lot with you.
Having watched this and being an English native, I realise how difficult it must be for some! Another place near me is called Witham... which has a silent H, so it’s pronounced locally as ‘Witum’
I stayed in a little town called Frome (surprisingly pronounced /fru:m/) on my visit visit to England.
A great introductory video. Learnt something new today. Didn’t know the true meanings behind all of those suffix’s. Leads you to develop a better understanding through personal research. Thank you.