American Reacts to Why Are British Place Names So Hard To Pronounce? REACTION 

You need to do more Jay Foreman reactions his videos are incredible

Using words like “Bloke” is firm proof of your gradual anglicisation and is to be welcomed 🇬🇧😍

I don't get how Kansas is rightly pronounced "kan-sus" but Arkansas is pronounced "ark-in-saw."

I'm so happy you're reacting to Jay's channel! If you're interested in UK culture at all you'll love the Map Men series, unironically some of the best content anyone puts on YT :) Edit: theyve also done an episode on America iirc!

As a Brit, I've learnt a lot from Jays vids

Jay has that rare ability to make presentations which are highly informative, rib-achingly humerous, and entirely entertaining. Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and occasionally Canada, are really the only environments in which Jay's and his ilk's form of dry-wit, mildy sarcastic, deadpan presentations on serious topics truly work. Just like Diane Morgan and Al Murray, this type of academic comedy has been central to these countries' children's interest in history since the publication of 1066 and All That in 1930.

You missed the Ankers joke with a silent W.

Jay Forman’s videos are hilarious but very well researched and are very informative.

I am British, but when I was kid we lived in a town in Australia for while, called Marybrynong - pronounced Mari- B'rnong And I was thrown out of an English class at school there because I tried to help the English teacher how to pronounce Gloustershire when he was struggling to read it out loud from a play

2 places from near me in the North East, Durham & Chester-le-Street used to be called the Roman names Dunelm & Cestria - which are still often used in Business names

Yay they mentioned where I live! Towcester is said like toaster. Even most British people not familiar with it say Tow(as in cow) Chester.

If you've only just discovered Jay then you're in for a treat. He's made some incredible videos over the years, both on his own and with Mark.

Gotham is where the idea of Gotham City came from in Batman. "Gotham is now a friendly village popular with families, but a few hundred years ago its residents had a reputation for "madness". One story goes that King John, also the villain in the legend of Robin Hood, was due to travel through Gotham on his way to nearby Nottingham. Any road the king travelled on would become a public highway, so the villagers are said to have feigned madness to deter the king - as it was thought to be infectious. Their absurd acts included building a fence around a bush to prevent a cuckoo escaping, and attempting to drown an eel in a pond. The trick worked, leading to the saying: "There are more fools pass through Gotham than remain in it." Villagers were also dubbed the Wise Men of Gotham. Word of the supposedly foolish acts spread, and they were collected in various books including The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam, published in 1565. The American author Washington Irving became aware of the tales and was the first person to link Gotham in England with New York in the US. He repeatedly referred to Manhattan as Gotham when writing, in 1807, in the Salmagundi papers, a satirical periodical mocking New Yorkers."

Map men is invariably funny and informative , they do the ad as a little comedy sketch , sometimes half way through so there might have been a bit more . It's even more confusing when place names are spelled identically and pronounced differently . Lovely to see the family together ❤.

Jay foreman and especially map men are great. Fast humour but I'm sure by now you can follow easily. 😊

I absolutely love Jay Foreman! So glad you finally discovered him 😁

Just in case anyone doesn’t know, Jay Foreman is world famous Beat-boxer’s brother Beardyman.

I love those two and this video in particular. Their stuff is reliable. It's all accurate. There were a lot of Roman forts here, because we were never entirely conquered.

I'm shocked you're just finding Jay Foreman now. So many great videos on his channel!

So lovely to see your new so beautiful daughter. 😍 ❤ King and Queen Boomer. Xxx I so LOVE watching you both acting to our British programmes and comedian's xxx You King Boomer and Queen Boomer cheer me up so very much!! As I the moment I am stuck upstairs in my bedroom. My health is that bad I can't get down my stairs!! XX

I live near a village called Woolfardisworthy, pronounced 'Woolsery'. And Exeter, still has its Roman walls. And the City fans love to sing about them

Lovely to see Princess Boomer. She's adorable.

Metz in France is pronounced - more or less - as ‘Mess’, the Batz in the Île de Batz is pronounced as ‘Ba’ and Rheims as ‘Rance’.

So sweet to see a glimpse into your family life. You're gonna make great parents ❤

1:41 Leominster is 'LEMSTER', Bicester is 'BISTER', Godmanchester is 'GUMSTER' (traditionally), Loughborough is 'LUFFBURRA', and Keighley is 'KEETHLEE'. More examples - Ulgham is 'UFFAM', Happisburgh is 'HAYZBURRA', Milngavie is 'MULGUY', Barnoldswick is 'BARLICK', and Woolfardisworthy is 'WOOLZERY'. Examples local to me in North East England - Finchale is 'FINKLE', Houghall is 'HOFFLE', Prudhoe is 'PRUDDA', Cambois is 'CAMMIS', and Ireshopeburn is 'EYES-UP-BURN'.

you get alot right, cuz ur not an idiot like some youtubers in your position😂 Jay Foremans Videos are soo good, fun and informative. English names are in the NE of USA, as well as southern parts like Virginia... then Spanish name on the west side and SouthWest, and Native names in Midwest and easternely like Toronto, which yes is in Canada but i luv it there! and AZ is awesome

YESSS THIS IS AMAZING! My favourite reactor reacting to one of the best UK youtubers ever! Please do more Jay Foreman videos, I beg you

Jay's family is pretty musically talented, too. Jay also plays the guitar and writes comedy songs, while his brother Darren (aka Beardyman) is also a comedian/entertainer/musician and world-class beatboxer.

9:22 - super super nice to see Queen Boomer and Princess Boomer make a royal appearance.

Glad to see everyone is doing well

Missed the town near Norwich (Norrich); Wymondham, Windem. Fooled me for some time after moving up to Norrfek

Great channel, very educational as well. I like his videos on London specifically.

Goldthorpe is been the focus of several treasure hunts for centuries. Vikings named their towns and cities after what was there and they were also known for burring their wealth. Hence, if a Viking names a place "Gold-City", it's because there's gold buried somewhere in that city. And people have been trying to find this gold for centuries.

Ricky Gervais' series The Office was set in Slough. Previously best known for Mars bars. Slough as in tough ? NO, YOU MUPPET! Slough as in dough ? NO YOU MUPPET! It is Slough as in 'OW ! Stop punching me as if I am a Muppet!'

Dear KB, QB, BB and Doggie B, very happy to see/hear you all in the same room. Trust you're all well, especially QB & BB. You look happy & content, just hope your insides match your cool, calm exterior haha! It's great to see you all. Wait until you lovely "Rug Rat" starts walking hehehehee😵! How often are her feeds? Does KB have to bottle feed your lovely baby at night, giving QB some "Shut Eye"? If Breast fed, in case you've NOT been told, you can express into bottles so KB can fed her during the night! Have I just "Dropped you right in it" KB haha! I wish you all the very best in your new life as. P A R E N T S! Oh yeah, pronunciations! America has some quirky places that are pronounced differently to the Spellings! TUCSON = Tooson ARKANSAS = R. Kansas , no "w" Plus you have a habit of adding & subtracting letters, such as:- Warder = Water Annabiodics = Antibiotics plus you over emphasise such as putting an extra letter by speech alone on the end of words or places! Places such as Moscow in Russia. "Moscow" that is pronounced "Mossco" in the English Language, the "w" is silent! Americans over emphasise the word "COW"! The reasoning is imo at school you weren't ever taught how to do such things which over the best years of your lives resulting in "Linguist Laziness", such as ... t'ords = towards! Which just proves Americans cannot Spell, Punctuate or Pronounce English words correctly and just cannot therefore speak ENGLISH 🤔 I know as I am partially educated in Minnesota in the early1960s and I spoke Just Like U Do. Until I was rescued and moved to B E R L I N, where my Dad was stationed - gotcha!👹👻💀👺 Happy Halloween in a few days y'all!👀

My brother went to uni at Aberystwyth and when I told our old PE teacher (who was from Cardiff) he laughed and told me they used to call it Aber-wrist-watch.

An American one that I always found crazy was Kansas and Arkansas. Add an "ar" in front and the pronunciation is completely different.

There's a village in Devon spelled Woolfardisworthy, Woolsery to Devonians. It was spelled both ways on various signposts when I lived there.

Stay for the ads. I think the ads on his channel are the best I've seen - particularly the one at the end of the video titled "How many continents are there?"

Ay! Grimsby my home town ,Today a crap hole but past history is rich as a Viking founded settlement .

Try this one "Ulgham"....just north of Newcastle....did you try it?...."uffam"???..

My favourite absurdly pronounced British place name is one that I heard mentioned a lot on the local news while growing up in the North of England - the southern Scottish town of Hawick. Is it Hay-wik you may wonder, or Hah-wik? No, it's Hoyk. One syllable, rhymes with oik.

I've haven't watched for a while, nice to see Princess Boomer, congratulations to you both.

These guys are great, I fell down their rabbit hole a few weeks ago and binged watched a fuck tonne of their vids.

I highly recommend you watch more Map Men and Unfinished London.

Love Map Men, even their ads. My favourite sponsored bit is the desert island one 😂

I'm definitely subscribing to his channel after watching this so thanks for putting this up KB. Thank you also for giving me a wee peep at the Princess, being a Mum myself, I immediately did the "awwww" thing. Queen, you look fab as always!

2:26 - That's what she said! 😂

About a year ago when I wasn't doing so good, I stumbled across your videos and ended up re-watching the whole of The Inbetweeners with you guys. Your videos cheered me up, I really looked forward to new ones dropping. Things are much better for me personally now and I still drop in to check out your videos. Congrats on your success and congrats on the birth of your first child, we are looking forward to the birth of our first too. God bless, you muppet.

I'm a big Jay Foreman fan, always glad to see people discover his content. The Al Murray bit he referenced is from the Every Country in the World routine where he's holding an inflatable beach ball globe and talking about the countries. And it's actually a very good point that the U.S. has a huge variety in the naming of settlements and municipalities due to the various linguistic influences introduced by its settlers or indigenous peoples. It's maybe taken for granted, but it's not a coincidence that a huge number of cities and places in states like Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California have names with Spanish origins, because these were all originally settled by the Spanish, and all except Florida were part of Mexico until the secession of Texas and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1846. And of course there's the former territory of French Louisiana, which has numerous towns of French origin - Baton Rouge, the capital of the modern state of Louisiana, literally means "red stick" in French. Corpus Christi, TX, is good old fashioned Latin ("body of Christ", named by Spanish explorers in reference to the Eucharist). My dad married an American who is from Wisconsin and her family are German-American, so of course their home town is New Berlin, WI. Multiple cities have the Greek suffix -polis, meaning city, so Indianapolis (go Colts!) literally means "city of Indiana", although this is more of an affectation than anything else. And of course there's pretty much all of Hawai'i. So because so many of these names have origins in European settlements they're rarely tricky for us Europeans to pronounce correctly. But then you get into the names derived from Native American languages, and that's where the trouble can start, because none of those languages are derived from or related to Indo-European languages - they're a completely separate family. So Americans may struggle with our booby traps, but I'm sure that lots of British people were just as likely to be embarrassed by mispronouncing "Connecticut", or assuming that Kansas and Arkansas should pretty much be pronounced the same way, or can never successfully remember how to spell Mississippi or Massachusetts the first time. So it does go both ways.

please do more map men videos they are incredible

Being a Mancunian, a person from Manchester. I can say we have roman ruins here. However I'm not going to pretend I'm educated enough on this topic to argue.

I don't know if you noticed that all the place names on the south-western tip of England were of celtic origin (with no Roman, Anglo-Saxon or Viking names)? Cornwall is the only part of England that is distinct from the rest in that respect, but it is not a separate nation like Wales or Scotland. To get your attention, I might also mention that this was where most of the pirates would sail to/from on the British isles back in the day. Might be worth looking into if you are curious. People historically from that region can often trace their way back via distinctive surnames that only emanate from that region.

Awww! Ickle Boomer Baby! Congratulations to you both.

I used to live near a village called Aveton Gifford but it was pronounced ouhton Gifford with a distinct ga. Strange because it was next to the river Avon

there videos are ALL great, and the sponsor segments are some of the best in all internet.

10:53 “Beep Boop Boop” 😂

I adore Jay and Mark for their comedic timing, writing and informative content. You should check out some of the music Jay Foreman made as well.

I was born in a town in Lancashire that has a Viking name (the general hospital has a big maternity unit), and was raised in a nearby town whose name is disputed - maybe Celtic updated by Old English, or maybe Anglo-Saxon. Either way, it's mentioned in the Domesday Book (the national census taken by King William I in 1066). All this stuff is pretty interesting to me and the Map Men do a lot of good videos.

Some weird places in America - Dinosaur, Colorado. Fries, Virginia. Placentia, California. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Soda Springs, Idaho. Bangs, Texas. Whynot, North Carolina. Cut and Shoot, Texas. Three Way, Tennessee. Climax, Michigan 😂😂❤

Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this fact England was once spelt Angland (Anglo Saxon era) but still pronounced the way it’s today and changed to England after hundreds of years

as Steve O & Johnny Knoxville said in Jackass "there is a school in Mianas"

they should have done more in Scotland to see if they can pronounce Drumnadrochit, Ecclefechan, or Auchtermuchty😂

I used to spend 4 days a month working away in... Frome. I intuitively knew to pronounce it "Froom" despite not knowing of the place previous to that. Perhaps my old family holidays in Somerset and Devon in the 80's set my subconscious ready for it.

Lol how the map of hard to pronounce place names has Hunstanton even though most people pronounce it as it’s written rather than the option of Hunts’ton, but it doesn’t have Happisburgh pronounced Hayesbruh.

In Shepshed Leicestershire we have a football ( Shepshed Dynamo) that plays at Butt Hole lane...cue the fans favourite song. " if you like it up the Butt Hole clap your hands "...

Leicestershire; Warwickshire;Warwick;Leamington;Fulham;Plymouth; Dulwich;Streatham

Winchester used to be the English capital. Alot of our surnames are Saxon French or Viking, i think my greatgrandmothers so Scottish sounding surname of Paterson is Viking.

I'm pretty sure I've heard you use that exact phrase "Golly, darn tootin', gee-whiz, hot diggardy-whoo" more than once?

I actually live in Frome

Jay Foreman videos are always funny as heck, I highly recommend them being viewed more.

Awwww cute. Congratulations 🥰🥰🥰

Awwwwwww how did i miss the baby came, Mega Congrats 🎉

Jays channels are the nuts mate. Always informative and very wonderfully silly. Even the adverts are funny 🤷🏻‍♂️ As for Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgocherychyndrobyllantysilliogogogoch, is is a silly made up name which most people shorten to Llanfair PG…and still don’t even pronounce that properly either! 🤣😂😅 My family live in Holyhead which is on Anglesey, the same island you find Llanfair PG. there is a song you can sing that teaches you how to say it but it takes practice 😉 Cheers matey 👍🍻🍀

J Foreman is one of those chaps that puts in a lot of research to make his videos as accurate as possible, the humoUr of the channel is one of the things that sets it apart from most others which makes watching the adverts at the end worth watching.

I live near a village called Trottiscliffe. Pronounced “Troz-Lee”. 🤷‍♂️

Ey up from Yorkshire. I don't usually comment but I thought the brief PB & QB interlude was grand. Love the instant draw from your job. True Dad right there. Map Men are spot on too 👍 Now I'm off to vomit!

09:22 sharp intake of breath, queen boomer and... erm... baby... boomer?

After a 13 hour work day this was pretty funny. And my home town Cirencester got a mention as well 😂

Your dog...!! My heart!

They / Jay have a whole bunch of themed channels and videos that are universally excellent

USA: I imagine a great deal of people cannot or do not pronounce Yosemite correctly? (I do know, in case you're wondering!)

ive lived about 10 miles away from penistone and i never clocked how great that name is until worryingly recently

I live in a place called cockburn - pronounced ‘ko burn’.

‘Hot diggity woo’ the best

One does not simply skip a Jay Foreman ad

Oh let's go this video is so great I thought you already watched it. My town of Loughborough even makes a feature in this video but I think should've featured more cuz no one, not even many brits I've asked, can pronounce it. It makes no sense lol it contradicts itself so hard with the same letters making completely different sounds.

Awww. A baby Boomer. 🍼❤️

You can usually get close to the pronunciations but repeatedly saying the word as fast as possible

Omg I cannot believe my home town Frome was the first place to be mentioned 😮

More Vic and Bob please: Shooting Stars or perhaps House of Fools (a very goofy sitcom they did). Also Alan Partridge and of course more Map Men!

More Jay Foreman please, quite funny and educational.

KB: Oh my Gd, look at the length of that! Me: That's what she said 😅

*Map Men - Why British cities make no sense* = The best video they've ever done, as they acknowledge the fact that *London is not a city.*

2:40 - Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch­. this is one of those "novelty" place names that is a bit of a tourist attraction (and is in fact a victorian expansion of the original name as a publicity stunt on the opening of the local railway station - it was originally Llanfair y Pwllgwyngyll - St Mary's Church, Pwllgwyngyll to distinguish it from nearby Pwllgwyngyll), and in "normal" usage usually gets shortened (Llanfair PG, in this case). The place name translates as "St Mary's church (Llanfair) of the pool of the white hazels (Pwllgwyngyll) near (go ger) the fierce whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) of St Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (ogogoch)". Pronunciation guide for those who want to show off (weathermen etc.): keep "ch" soft like in scottish "loch" - *chlan* fire pwich *gwin* gich (like pick) gog *are* (like care) ich win *dro* b (like drop) ich *chlan* tee *see* lee oh gog og och (all short like pop). Stresses on the bold syllables.

Congrats on the new addition princess Boomer.

They forgot to mark "London" on their map, weirdly. Although the origin of the name itself is disputed, it is almost certainly Celtic in origin (although the correct term is not "Celtic" but "Brittonic") , latinised to "Londinium" by the Romans and then Anglicised by the Anglo-Saxons to "Lundenwic". The root for both is the phonetic "London", which predates the Roman invasions (in fact the earliest reference we have to the city in writing, only discovered in the last 10 years, comes from about 20 years after the Roman invasion of Britain and simply calls it "London") and it is the how we refer to the city today

Hey Boomer, always remember when a Brit laughs at an American pronunciation that we're no better with American place names. For instance, your home state of Maryland. The British pronounce it as spelt, Mary Land. Americans say it the way you do, Marieland. I learned pretty quick saying Maryland got me laughed at!

Map Men are hilarious & fascinating. If you havent seen him, you should check out Jay's brother, Beardyman too. He's a beatboxer who made his own looper & effects machine & and he's amazing.

Haha I'm a Brit and even I pronounce them incorrectly. I thought Bicester was "bye cestor". It's "bister".