Why Are the Names of British Cities & Cities So Onerous to Pronounce?: A Humorous However Informative Primer

Once they make their first transocean­ic voy­age, quite a lot of Amer­i­cans select to go to Eng­land, on the assump­tion that, what­ev­er cul­ture shock they could expe­ri­ence, a minimum of not one of the dif­fi­cul­ties shall be lin­guis­tic. Solely when it’s too late do they dis­cov­er the true imply­ing of the previous line about being sep­a­rat­ed by a com­mon lan­guage. Happen names, not simply in Eng­land however much more so throughout the entire of Nice Britain. How would you professional­nounce, as an illustration, Beaulieu, Ramp­isham, Mouse­gap, Tow­ces­ter, Gotham, Quern­extra, Alnwick, or Frome?

There’s a superb probability that you just acquired most of these unsuitable, even in case you’re not Amer­i­can. However as defined in the Map Males video above, bona fide Brits even have trou­ble with a few of them: a couple of years in the past, the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward-look­ing Frome got here out on high of a domes­tic sur­vey of essentially the most mis­professional­nounced names. Should you’re eager on mak­ing your expe­ri­ence in Nice Britain some­what much less embar­rass­ing, what­ev­er your nation­al­i­ty, the Map Males have put togeth­er a humor­ous information to the foundations of “prop­er” place-name professional­nun­ci­a­tion — resembling they exist — in addition to an expla­na­tion of the his­tor­i­cal fac­tors that orig­i­nal­ly made it so coun­ter­in­tu­itive.

The evo­lu­tion of the Eng­lish lan­guage itself has some­factor to do with it, involv­ing because it does “a base of Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on,” a “wholesome sprint of Previous Norse,” a “large dol­lop of Nor­man French,” and “only a truthful­ly detectable trace of Celtic.” British place names mirror its his­to­ry of set­tle­ment and inva­sion, the previous­est of them being Celtic in ori­gin (the dread­ed Frome, for examination­ple), fol­lowed by Latin, then Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on (outcome­ing in cities with names like Nor­wich, whose silent W I nev­er appear to professional­nounce silent­ly sufficient to sat­is­fy an Eng­lish­man), then Norse.

After cen­turies and cen­turies of sub­se­quent shifts in professional­nun­ci­a­tion with­out cor­re­spond­ing adjustments in spelling, you arrive in a coun­attempt “lit­tered with pho­web­ic boo­by traps.” It may all seem to be a reflec­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tic British anti-log­ic diag­nosed, not with­out a word of pleasure, by George Orwell. However trav­el­ing Amer­i­cans gassed up on their per­cep­tions of their very own rel­a­tive prac­ti­cal­i­ty ought to take a protracted, exhausting take a look at a map of the Unit­ed States a while. Hav­ing grown up in Wash­ing­ton State, I ask this: who amongst you dares to professional­nounce the names of cities like Marysville, Puyallup, Yaki­ma, or Sequim?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wel­come to Llan­truthful­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoc, the City with the Longest Title in Europe

The Progress of Lon­don, from the Romans to the Twenty first Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

How Lon­dini­um Grew to become Lon­don, Lute­tia Grew to become Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Bought Their Mod­ern Names

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Complete His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to At the moment

The Atlas of True Names Restores Mod­ern Cities to Their Mid­dle Earth-ish Roots

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.