How to pronounce British towns & cities: -HAM, -BURY, -WICH, -MOUTH...
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- A surprising thing about British town names is they are often pronounced differently than they are written. For example, the name “Tottenham” is actually pronounced phonetically like “tot-nam”, which is only two syllables compared to the three syllables in its written form. Depending on where you are in Britain, you may even hear different variations in pronunciation. So how can you know how to pronounce town names properly? In this lesson, I will teach you about common suffixes of British town and city names and how to pronounce them correctly every time. I will teach you the etymology of suffixes such as -ham, -bury, -field, -wich, -mouth, -pool, and -ing. We will also talk about what these suffixes mean. For example, did you know that any town name that ends in -pool means “harbour”? Learning these suffixes will improve your pronunciation and knowledge of British town names.
Test your understanding with the quiz at www.engvid.com...
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 😂❤️
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.
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.
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 😊
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.
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
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...
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.
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 😂
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)
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"!
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
"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.
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.
"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
🤣😁
In other words, at the first glance it is impossible to guess the correct pronunciation of a city or town in the UK just by knowing and following the rules of the English language, so many are the possible combinations. You can be posh/not posh. You can belong to a number of different social classes. You can come from many different English speaking places in the world. And yet not be able to know how to pronounce them correctly.
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!
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.
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.
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.
She is one of the best teacher of English language in England
I'm from Massachusetts and we have many of the same place names pronounced the same way.
Obviously, you colonials took place names from the mother country 🙄
@@alanmawson9601 😂
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.
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.
I am a Canterbury by marriage, My maiden name is Garrett. We are in the Southern part of the United States. This is very informative thank you for sharing this with us. God Bless
You missed the most deceptive ones like Edinburgh and Loughborough.
Those would be real googlies to most viewers, in my opinion.
Edinburgh being pronounced Edinbruuuh, im never going to understand WHY
I’ve been to Edinbruuh, so I got that pronunciation from the locals very quickly. But I have to know, is it LuhBruuh? LofBruh? Lowbro?
An Australian truck driver was asking directions to Loughborough and asked a chap in a service station if he could tell him how to get to Loogabarooga haha
Its pronounced Luffbra or Luffboro
Lived in Edinburgh for years. The best way to say it is Embra, oe Emhbra. Easy.
There's Wrotham, too - or "Root-am" as it's actually pronounced. A slightly more extreme example than those given.
I’m from the Appalachian mountains in the states so my pronunciation of these would be COMPLETELY different than either of your choices 😂
Loughborough is a good 'un. A friend of mine was stopped by an American couple asking for the way to 'Loo Boo Roo'.
How do you say it correctly?
@@Bloxeh luff-bra
Thanks!
Americans usualy pronounce borough as burrow. Ive noticed this being from Scarborough. Id like to here them say Scarbooroo in an American accent.
I admit to having a problem with the way Americans pronounce Van Gough. It certainly isn't pronounced Van Go!! Or at least it isn't to our good friends the Dutch who would pronounce it something like Vun hgoghhh...with lots of back of the throat. We have to try and pay respect to the native pronunciatiations I think...it's just respectful.
Quernmore and Heysham - two villages near to where I grew up in Lancaster
I know what you mean 😉.
I had problems with Claughton,thinking it was like Laughton (as in Charles Laughton) to find out it’s Clafton,
but smugly I remind people that there’s Leominster with a silent o and the a in Malvern is said as an o.
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.
This was amusing. I live in the Mid-Western US and we have a small municipality within my county named Shrewsbury but locals pronounce it as Shews-berry. There are loads of cities, towns and villages in the US named after English towns but many are pronounced in different ways while some are pronounced exactly the same. Languages evolve over time especially where geographic separation is concerned. In American English words tend to be pronounced much more phonetically although there can be exceptions, especially in the deep South an Appalachia region.
If you are posh, you've got no interest in pronouncing "Shrewsbury" or mentioning it anywhere in your speech.
lol. But I've been to Shrewsbury twice, it's a beautiful place. Maybe rich people would never go there or talk about it, but they're missing out! But I'm from Birmingham so everything is a paradise in comparison haha.
It's actually very nice, lots of small artisanal shops, good boutiques as well as many chain stores. Lovely riverside restaurants and theatre. You're missing out!
It has a fine and long established Public School called ShrOAsbury - the town itself is ShrOOsbury!
@@1946nimrod I knew someone who taught at that school at an early stage of his career.
what abt the college at oxford does that not exist lol
13:40 In North London the expression for 'the North" has always been "North of Watford GAP". This refers to the Watford Gap services on the M1 motorway, further north than Watford the town by a good distance! :-)
Ossie Ardiles, former Tottenham Hotspur mananager, used to pronounce Tottenham as "Tottingham" 😂
Yeah, it's more like Tottn'um than what this chick is saying.
Hahaha
"in de cup for Tottingham" !!!!
Love watching these, Londoners trying to teach the world real English, 😂 I live just down road from Glastonbury and in Wurzelese the T is replaced by a S so tiz Glasson- Bury. And two other good ones are Bicester and surprising they weren't mentioned are (Bister) and Alnwick (Annick). Really enjoyed this.
Interesting how these place names are pronounced in different parts of the UK. Here in Scotland, we would pronounce -shire to rhyme with wire, we wouldn't drop the r from the end of -cester, we pronounce the -ham without dropping the h, and Norwich ends in -rich, not -ridge.
In my understanding as a non native English person (although I have spent 4 years living in England) is that although is a fairly easy language to learn (for both adults and children) the hardest and also inexplainable part of it is pronunciation.
English is a vowel-heavy language; it has vowlels and dipthongs not in other languages, and dialects differ mostly in their vowels. How can it not cause confusion when Irish say "fight" almost like "fate", and some American southerners say "I" like "ah", or "pen" like "pin", when these are all different words. Then there's the 'th' sounds (two of them). English spelling is probably the hardest part. Native English speakers have to use dictionaries three times as much as, say, German speakers, and always have to look up -able vs -ible because they sound identical.
@@sluggo206 exactly. Well said. I don't know where you come from but in my country I was never taught how to pronounce English correctly. I just learnt grammar, syntax, vocabulary and different grammatic phenomena. Are there any rules for English pronunciation or is it just for people studying English literature? Or is it just sth really really hard that they don't bother teaching to ordinary people who just seek to learn a foreign language?
@@geogianno7744 By "rules" do you mean how to predict the pronunciation from the spelling, or what the fifty-ish phonemes are, or how to improve your accent?
For the first one, I always knew pronunciation and learned spelling in school, while you're going the opposite direction. I assume the skills work both ways. English spelling is morphophonemic, meaning the spelling depends on where the roots and affixes came from (Anglo-Saxon, Old French, Latin, or another language) and how long they've been in English. Old words from before the 1800s or so follow the "phonics" spelling rules, which you can find lessons on. ("short a", "long a", "hard c", "soft c", "silent e", "double consonants", "ee vs ea", etc). Phonics explains how the spelling system created by Norman French scribes in the 1100s maps to current pronuciation (after the Great Vowel Shift and later changes in the UK and US). Until around the 1800s, English often respelled or repronounced foreign words to make them conform to the phonics rules. But then it stopped doing that, so now when new words come into English they keep their original spelling and pronunciation, even if it contradicts the phonics rules. That's why you have to know when a word entered English and were it came from to know which spelling rules it follows.
To learn the phonemes, choose a dialect (RP or General American etc), and find a lesson on all those phonemes. English Jade is doing some of this here, but this video doesn't have all the RP phonemes, so you'll have to find a series that does.
To improve your accent, I don't know. Imitate English Jade, I guess. I've only seen a couple of her videos so I don't know what the others have in them.
Interesting video for me because I'm from the eastern Saxon speaking part of the Netherlands and my mother is Frisian, so one could say that I'm a first generation Anglo-Saxon ;-)
I am from Bremen where we speak low German Saxon style, even with a little influence from the Dutch who helped us to drain some swampy lands (like the Hollerland area in the east of Bremen for example) Half of the English language seemed just like we speak at home to me, the other half is messed up by the French and makes it as chaotic as it is today.
absolutely wonderful breakdown. Thank you so much for your work
I remember my pronunciation teacher going around in the first class asking everyone to give pronouncing "Kirkcudbrightshire" a shot. If someone got it right first try they got 100/100 and didn't have to come again. We all had to stay. There was not a single 100/100 at the end of the semester.
No mention to Slough? XD
When I first came to the UK I've pronounced it "Sluf" countless times 🤣
lucky you didn't pronounced it "slut" or else you would be dead by now
I'm not surprised. Shawclough (an area of Rochdale [locally pronounced "Rotchdale"]) is pronounced "Shawcluff". Trough is pronounced "troff". Through is pronunced "throo" or "thru". Bough (of a tree) is pronounced "bow" (as in Bow your head to the Queen). Bow (as in bow and arrow) is pronounced "Bo". In some regions, Ought is pronounced "owt"
@@blackenreed1425 I hate you, it'll take me 10 years to memorise all those names ahahah
@@matteventu Thank you. It's nice to know when to stay away from someone.. But I forgot to mention "Thought" ... ... ....
@@blackenreed1425 just out of curiosity, how did you (I assume you're British) end up on this video? XD
Some names like Sheffield and Birmingham were familiar because I used to watch the old UK Top Gear a lot. But it is interesting to see how some words are pronounced differently than how it is spelt.
I'm from Birmingham, Al. You are right. As Americans even living in that a
Yes you are correct, shrowsbury is for the posh, Shrewsbury is for the outsiders and Shoesbury is the local pronunciation
There are actually three versions of Shrewsbury. Many of the locals say, “Shewsbry”.
-bry as in ‘pry’ ?
@@MsNovazz no bry and in 'bree'
Model Railway Noob i see. Thanks 🙏
I don't live in Shrewsbury but still in Shropshire. On a train the announcer says Shrowsbury, but everyone else I know say Shrewsbury.
Just walk around with Anthony Hopkins whenever you go anywhere. He'll save you.
But he's Welsh!
I was in Shrewsbury recently and asked a lass from the town about the correct pronunciation. She said everyone from the town pronounces it ‘Shroos-bury’ and it really narks them when they hear it pronounced ‘Shrohs-bury. There you have it. Straight from the horses mouth.
There is a village near Huddersfield in W.Yorkshire that is spelt Slaithwaite but is pronounced as Slawit. Another is Golcar which we say as Gocar -Go ca-
Hi..many people from abroad also get pronunciation of the town of "Reading" wrong...clue...it NOT pronounced as Reeding😀👍
Very often children are taught by adults who, in turn, have been taught an incorrect pronunciation, and therefore, just pass it on. For example many children abroad are taught, or have been in the past, that the pronunciation of the word Apple is Epple.....😱😱😱😡😡😡
Just wanted to say….wow, well done. Soooo interesting, educational and informative. Hope you are an educator as you are an excellent teacher, you’re students would be so lucky. xx
I come from the Bury area which was originally in Lancashire and there was always this conflict on how you pronounced Bury, was it from when you bury someone, or was it a berry from a tree. I found in a certain social class the ladies preferred Berry. By the way, my home town is Ramsbottom, you could do a whole class on the origins of that.
As someone from very near Lancashire I don't see how you'd pronounce bury and berry differently?
@@Pattonator14 Obviously you haven't traveled far enough try Cheshire where I lived for four years.
@@africadreamin I'm from lancs as well and I hear no difference between bury or berry either
@@darrenlamb5640 I'm from Ramsbottom and spent a good deal of my time (Up the valley) in Lancashire, not in the relatively new GMC. The accents in the valley are a lot stronger than say, Ramsbottom which has become an extension of the Manchester overspill so accents and prenunciations are bound to change.
@@africadreamin well I'm from slap bang in the centre of lancs... preston. So not really anywhere near the GM area.
Prounouncing English place names demonstrates English of humour. We just purposely pronounce it inconsistently and change it to fool everyone who thinks they are good at English. Now go to Germany and pronounce Cologne (the Germans know the English ‘colone’ as well as the German Kolm pronounciation) with a hard, hard g . Sends them wild and they try to correct you. Just Beautiful! We might not beat them on penalties but by God, we tear them up on pronunciation.
Plenty of people say “Norritch” for Norwich. Others say “Norridge”.
Unless they come from the Norwich area, in which case it usually sounds something like Naarch.
You teach superbly!!!!.
What about Berkshire known as " Barkshire". That's a difficult one for some.
Or Derby, pronounced Darby. Unless it's in Western Australia or Tasmania, then it's Durby. Although we still use the pronunciation "local Darby" for a match between neighbouring sports teams.
Great pronounciation enlightement 😅 I hv no idea it sounds extremely different
I had a terrible time trying to guess how to say "Slough". Turns out it rhymes with "cow".
It doesn't help that slough, when a verb, is "sluff".
Plough. Tough. Makes you realise how complicated English must be to learn!
We English are nothing if not wildly inconsistent :) There is a village in Cumbria called Brough, pronounced "Bruff".
give Loughborough a spin. Ough pronounced 2 different ways. Luffbruh
Leicester is the place l used to live when l was young. it is very clear English
Locals in yorkshire says “uddersfield”
Many say 'oodersfield'.
We have Durham in North Carolina and we say it the same way. American accents vary widely. Let’s hear you try Houston Street (NYC). Nostrand Avenue. Hoyt and Schermerhorn. Courtelyou Road. Kosciuszo Bridge.
@1:27 Birmingham in Perfect Hillbillie. We in the States have posh, too.
In Ipswich people often say Ipsich not Ipswich. In Norwich people normally say Norich not Noridge, However the explanation is correct for people who are not from those towns.
Cheers Jade, as always ,you are so helpful
I found this very interesting and fascinating. Thanks for confirming the Worcestershire sauce pronunciation. Been watching too many American cooking programmes.
You gave the suffix of those words, it is quite important!
Nothing really to say about Wrexham except it's definitely a Welsh town not English!
Dawn Tynan I thought it was in England
@@lr3521 Definitely not, I've lived here all my life. It's a Welsh town but on the border near chester.
The Welsh spelling is Wrecsam, same pronunciation
As a local of Poole and Bournemouth. The ‘n’ can be silent or pronounced. I usually keep it silent.
We pronounce “Durham” the same way as you in North Carolina USA! Yay!
I've never heard anyone pronounce Norwich as Noridge.
Here in Nottingham we say norich
People of Norwich say it like that 😀
@@dianeshelton9592 with a proper Norfolk accent it would Naaaa-ch. But most would say Noor-ich.
I heard of Norwich pronounced Norrich.
Those that live in Cirencester would shorten to “Ciren” not cester”
An old advert: Three Bears Porridge, it’s the porridge from Norwich
The crossing to which Guildford refers is of the river Wey. It sits in the Wey Gap where the river has cut itself into the North Downs and is thus a more hilly town than most in the South. The places referred to in 'Pilgrim's Progress' were Bunyan's renaming of places around Guildford. He'd never seen real mountains, the North Downs being the biggest hills he knew. We know where the 'Slough of Despond' referred to. It is now a couple of football pitches, maybe three.
Cholmondeley (Cheshire).... "Chumly" I believe.
Yes, it is.
Stephen Phillip One of my favourite words and places... Cholmondeley x
Stephen Phillip hopefully she will include it in her next one
When this lovely lady explaining about Tamworth, Farnsworth and Bedworth I honestly thought that she was about to wrap up the video.
And then she proceeded to the next page of the whiteboard. ... 💀💀💀 ...
Boy oh boy the highschool vibes hit me so hard
Interesting, one really gets to understand to which extend English is not a phonetic language.
One of my biggest surprises when looking for Gate Acre Brow, was that this place near Liverpool sounded like a single word, which rhymed with had-a-car with a silent "r" in car. And not three sseparate words.
According to Wikipedia it's archaic, but how would you pronounce "Somersetshire" ? I'm American, but I love studying English history, and this one always trips me up.
Great lesson Jane,
Thanks❗
Greetings from 🇮🇹
BirmingHAAMMMM haha i love how you exaggerated it lol
I taught secondary school English for 35 years. It is the best language ever having been enhanced by constant invasions by other nationalities over and over again. The Vikings, the Angles, the Jutes and the Saxons, the Frisians, the Norman French, the Romans and on and on. The richness, however, contributes to the lack of consistent rules. I always felt sorry for my students for whom English was a second language. My favourite example of nutsoid pronunciation is the surname Chalmondesley (I believe that is the spelling) which is pronounced “Chumley”. Go figure!
Thx u, btw u remind of my English teacher when I was 10 yo. She was from London.
When she said “em, em” I thought she was burping 😂
I love english accent. It's really lovely ❤️❤️
I like the font u've used for the town names lettering, very posh. What's the name of it please? Thanks.
Phonetic lessen after almost 40 years ;)
I was on the train from York heading to Edinburgh when I spied Durham Cathedral. I know it’s famous, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.
I was stationed in the 1990's as a US Air Force member at RAF Fairford and was rather confused at first how some village names were shortened example Cirencester was simply Ciren or Gloustershire was simply Glouster.......loved my 2 years in the UK and miss my snakebite and black in the pubs🤪
Funny enough, the easiest for me is Cirencester. Pronounced as it's written. I missed Edinburgh in your list though.
Usually I pronounce it Cir'ncester (not stressing the en). Locally in Cheltenham we refer to it as just Ciren. We also tend to say Chelt'nam'.
Edinburgh is not in the list because despite the misleading title ('... British Towns and Cities) the video is actually all about English towns and cities. In the last couple of decades English people have become increasingly careless and casual when it comes to distinguishing between England and Britain.
@@miken891 Have we?
Is it Edinburgh or Edinborough?, anyhow, in NZ we have Dunedin which means/equals Edinburgh /Borough. ✊
@@miken891 Haha 👍👏👏👏 So true
"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.
“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
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.
"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
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.
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 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.
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.
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’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)