Green witch

[pne]

A poll on the pronunciation of some English placenames—mostly for people from the UK.

[Poll #399505]

Any other placenames with "interesting" pronunciations you can tell me?

Comments

[kamara.livejournal.com]

For Portsmouth:
I say Ports-muth. I don't know what you mean my neutral vowel ^_^;; So here, have a comment!

For Birmingham:
Burm-ing-hum

Cirencester
Never heard of it, so don't know o_O; Ci-Rin-Chester I suppose, but never heard of it to know really.

Other interesting places?
Well that would have to be Cockermouth :D
Pronounced by the locals as Cocker-muth. It's in Cumbria.

London

[mr-eleganza.livejournal.com]

I usually say Londinium :)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Portsmouth - Pompey!
I say both Sissister and Soyren for Cirencester.
I grew up very near Thame so 'Thame's' exists for me as a word and is pronounced Taymz (the town is Taym), but that's just pernickety. And the Thames around here is pronounced Isis.

Other interesting placenames:
Cherwell which is Char-well when a river and Cher-well when a district.
Ducklington is pronounced Derk-lington locally.
Kingston Bagpuize - the second word is Bag-pews.
Eynsham - En-shum, not Ayn-sham (but the local radio presenters don't seem to know this)
Ewelme - Yoo-elm, which ought to be easy but I've heard a lot of awful versions.

[karen2205]

And the Thames around here is pronounced Isis.

Don't confuse the poor chap:-)

[silverfiligree.livejournal.com]

I can't resist pronouncing Bagpuize as "Bagpuss" :)

[karen2205]

Greenwich - I think my pronounciation is closer to 'grenwich' than 'grennitch'

London - I tend to say as 'Lun-don'.

Leicester - Lehs-ster.

[angelsk.livejournal.com]

I live near Derby!!! Don't really pronounce Circencester so left it.

There are tons of -wick towns, prounounced -nick/neck

Beauvoir == Beaver!

Can't think of any more atm.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Beauvoir == Beaver!

Ah yes! And Beaulieu == Bewley!

[senji.livejournal.com]

Bir-min'-@m

[silverfiligree.livejournal.com]

Another option for Birmingham would be Bir-ming-g@m to demonstrate the local accent that emphasises the letter G.

[smogo.livejournal.com]

Por'sm@th and Bir-ming-g@m for me.

[smogo.livejournal.com]

Er, where Por rhymes with 'daugh' in daughter.

[liv]

Berkshire. It's the same pronunciation issue as Derby, but it's also close (in spelling) to my surname and leads people to pronounce the latter incorrectly. And I'm not going to give examples of placenames round here, because that would just be unfairly confusing.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, Berkshire. And Reading in Berkshire, which is not pronounced like reading a book.

[subbes]

Reddin.'

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Ports-m@th (with a shwa or neutral vowel in the second syllable)

No idea what you mean by this, and I'm no good at explaining how I pronounce things (which is considered utterly wrong by most of the country due to me being Northern!) - the closest I can explain it is "ports-m'th", which may be what you are getting at with this @ business. Similarly, London is "Lun-d'n" and Worcester is "Wu-ster". Northern folk often disregard vowels as an overcomplication (not entirely but when there's too many of them) - hence such places as "Hall'i'th'wood" and a place not far from here that no-one who lives more than 5 miles from it is able to pronounce - Slaithwaite. Looks simple enough, but if you pronounced it phonetically to a local (as most people do), you wouldn't exactly endear yourselves to them! You should put that in a poll and see if anyone can guess it - I'd be quite surprised (even the train guards can't pronounce it correctly when listing the stops the train makes)!

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

*does the Silly American taking a poll dance*

;0 I surprisingly have picked the most common answers, too. Sounds like I could maybe fake my way around an accent. ;)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Did you just pick the "most obviously different from how it looks as if it's pronounced" option? Since in a "how do you pronounce this", it's kind of a given that most of them will be "trick" questions, so the "obvious" pronunciation is likely to be wrong.

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

No. I picked the ones that SOUNDED right to me as the English people I have heard, would have said it.

[pne.livejournal.com]

You seem to have a good ear for it, then!

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

thanks.

[eilanhp.livejournal.com]

I seem to be the only one pronouncing 'Greenwitch' as 'green witch', although you can barely hear the t when I speak. It's just the way it works for me.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

Another American, surprised at how many answers I had in line with the general consensus. (I pronounce Leicester "lie - chest - er," which I figured was probably incorrect but was the best I could do based on the spelling.)

In my American places version, I'd have to include New Orleans, Norfolk, and Nevada (which are pronounced very differently in those places and outside those places).

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Apparently I got "Derby" wrong. In my defense, my father-in-law lives in Derbyshire which is 'Dur-bi-shur so I think my guess that "Derby" is "'Dur-bee" is reasonable.

I'd have guessed Cirencester was "see-ren-ster" but Gareth has never even heard of it and says he wouldn't know how to pronounce it unless he'd been there.

[pne.livejournal.com]

says he wouldn't know how to pronounce it unless he'd been there.

Probably wise, given the sound-to-symbol correspondence of the average British placename...

I always said "Cirencester", which is what I heard from my father (it's in the Cotswolds, the area where my grandparents used to live for many years) but I believe I saw somebody say at some point that the traditional local pronunciation is/was "Sissester". Ah, maybe I got that idea from the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester).

OTOH some local pronunciations are undoubtedly dying out as people move in from other places who are not aware of the "special" pronunciation.

[subbes]

Sissester? Maybe if they live in Chicester.

[wolf-shadow.livejournal.com]

Portsmouth = Ports-muth or Pompey
Southampton = South-am-ton or Sotton
Both depending on how lazy I feel, really.

One people can't pronounce:
Godalming > Should be Goddle-ming, but have heard 'God-al-ming', with the stress on 'al' and 'God-all-ming' more than once.

Took me a while to believe my Mum about Wherwell when I was younger.

Wherwell

[pne.livejournal.com]

Took me a while to believe my Mum about Wherwell when I was younger.

What about it? Is it pronounced in an unusual manner? I've never heard of it.

Re: Wherwell

[wolf-shadow.livejournal.com]

It's something like 'Wirral'...

[blob.livejournal.com]

I chose 'other' for Worcester because I don't pronounce it Woooooooster, more like Wuster.

[bride.livejournal.com]

*blargh* Let's try this again...

Cirencester
Worcester
Leicester

I've never had to say those out loud, so I've just been mispronouncing them in my head =)

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

I'm american, but I've gotten a fair amount of British influence on pronunciation of their place names.

Haven't ahd so much exposure to the "cester"s, so I left them blank. My intuition is actually to pronounce them as "ch@ster".

[bacskocky.livejournal.com]

Other interesting place name pronunciations:

Bangor: Bane-gore
Topsham: Top-some
Onancock: On-in-coke
Saco: Say-co

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Onancock
*snickers*

[eviepeevie.livejournal.com]

I used to live near a place Flitwick - (Flit-ick).
and portsmouth, the ay i pronounce, is not really suitable for writing down, so i'll put ** **** ******* ******.

Another Anglophone American

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Wow. I thought for sure I'd get Cirencester wrong. I actually read it "Sinster" in my head for a long time, based on the "say it really fast" method that produces things like "Wooster".

[x-dingbat-x.livejournal.com]

lun-din, wore-es-tur.