Americans Try To Pronounce British Towns Ft. Kelsey, Freddie & Jazzmyne 

Americans don't seem to get that UK place names are the result of literally THOUSANDS of years of language evolution. This is why there's loads of letters in there that aren't pronounced. As well as British people just shortening the pronunciation to make them easier to say.

See, the problem here, is that people forget that the UK has had many different languages through history. Also, ‘British’ can mean English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish, and there was a mix there. Knowing how to pronounce English place names that have filtered through old English and Medieval French to their current spelling and pronunciation doesn’t help at all if you’re trying to decipher Scottish place names like Milngavie or Auchermuchty, because the lingual source is completely different. PLEASE READ THE OTHER COMMENTS BEFORE COMMENTING. I am so very very tired of getting alerts from people who don’t know the difference between Great Britain and the British Isles.

dude that man is literally IN THE UK (the plug socket) and got most wrong

Fun fact: Every British town with a name ending in 'chester' or 'caster' or ' cester' was once a Roman town

Isabel correctly pronouncing Gloucester because she went to a SHAKESPEARE CAMP is hilarious to me

should’ve given them llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

“I’ve been to London” “I studied in London” “I’ve been to Scotland” Swear that’s all Americans think make up the UK!

Literally all of them: I've been to London, so I'm somewhat of a massive UK superfan Me: :/

“There’s a sauce in America with this name” yeah... it comes from Worcester

Americans: “british town names are so stupid” Also Americans: has tonnes of towns called the same as us but with “new” at the beginning

They’re right- but they’re assuming the towns were named in modern English. Some of these towns were named in Welsh, old English, Latin and even a mix of broad Scots and Gaelic- they were also named when dialects sounded different and English wasn’t standardised. That’s the reason the rules don’t stay the same- you just have to know what the place is called!

The fact that I'm british and I cant even pronounce ruislip 😂😂😭😭😭

"It literally can't be anything else other than 'Chis-wick" *laughs in British*

They're complaining about the pronunciation of things like Ruislip but can they comment with places like Arkansas and Illinois? 😂

America: ‘British towns are so stupid’ United Kingdom: ‘You took most of our names’

Fun fact: London isn’t the only place in the UK.

"We have a sauce in America with this name." Hey love, we have it here in the UK too, and you'll never guess where the sauce originated! 🤣🤣

‘We have a sauce called Worcester’ Me: 😭 it’s from Worcester

"we have a sauce in america with this name :)" mate you'll never guess where it comes from

A lot of these names are reeeeeeeeeally old (Anglo Saxon). They're weird to Brits as well, but we're just so used to them :D

Me just hateing americans british stereotypes as i’m british this a new level of hate

“I’ve been to London a couple of times” everyone in England has decided to dislike you

You forgot “hull”, pronounced either like “ull” or “never go there”

UK: We’re going to invite Americans to American on this channel UK comments: how dare these American in such an American way

I'm sorry, that guy literally works at Buzzfeed UK.. like.. bruh.

being british this hurt me inside

Does anyone else get annoyed when people do a 'British' accent and about 3% of British people actually speak like that 😂😂

"Pronunciation's supposed to have rules!" Oh it does, but every rule in the English language always has at least 1 exception

Aberystwyth is a town in Wales. In Welsh, W and Y are also vowels, so there’s actually more vowels in it than you think! Aberystwyth can be pronounced in two different ways. You’ll find the locals tend to pronounce it ‘Aber-ust-wyth’ rather than ‘Aber-ist-wyth’. Both are right though!

You should do a just Welsh one

'This one literally looks like you head smashed into a keyboard, and that was the town name' 😂😂 welcome to the welsh language hahaha🙌🏼

"Some people say we lost the War of Independence, but others say it was a lucky escape"

Let’s be honest, how many English people can actually pronounce Garioch or Kirkcudbright. Don’t get me started on welsh towns either 🙈

when they started to pronounce welsh town names with an “english” accent i’m not going to lie i was v triggered lol

Some of these town names I haven't even heard and I live in the UK!!

Her: B Y E S I S T E R James charles: Get back here sister

"There's a sauce in America that has this name" Dear Lord. Where do you think the sauce comes from.

they were saying stuff way too poshly and that made it sound weird 🤣

This is what we get for centuries of Viking, Anglo Saxon, Celtic, French, a tad bit of Roman and community isolation.

Me, a Bostonian, on the first one: GLOUSTAH!!!!

I’m British and pronounced some of these wrong 😂

americans saying that we’re wrong, but they literally changed our language😂

who else only knows Ruislip cause of the central line

"there are rules for pronuciation !!! " while pronouncing pronuciation wrong.

What they don’t understand is some of these aren’t even English their Welsh 😂

I’m English and I still don’t know how to pronounce most of them hahahahah

As an American, living in Massachusetts definitely helped with pronouncing half of those town names correctly. Massachusetts is a mix of indigenous town names and English town names

When he read a Welsh place name and put an awful English accent on 😂

americans: learn that you don’t pronounce the ‘ces’ in gloucester also americans: biCESter

It's 'Luffbrough', not 'Loffbrough' like Google says.

If they'd brought someone from Massachusetts they would have nailed this lmao

Tbf you could have just given them Birmingham, and they still would have pronounced it wrong.

10:55 “PRONOUNCIATION is supposed to have rules” lol the irony

i love how they think we just "add" in letters that aren't pronounced, and not like most of these town names are literally about a thousand years old and therefore the pronunciation of them has changed over time...

“I’ve been too london” “i love the uk” always bloody London with them

oh my god why am i getting so angry at this it’s not okay 😂

As a British person.... I also struggled 😶😬

Just one reply to all this ...Kansas is pronounced like Kansas, yet Arkansas is pronounced like Arkansor!

"there's a sauce in America with this name" well love. if more global knowledge was learnt at school, you could learn, that there are multiple countries that have Worcester sauce. but you'll never guess where it originated from!!!!

“Oh yeah I’ve been to London a couple of times” Can’t pronounce Chiswick

“Oh now y’all wanna bring back the W” 🤣

I love how they don't realise some of these town names were decided on before we spoke modern English

If you know who James Acaster is, 8:12 definitely made you think they were gonna say “Looga Baruga”

When will they learn that ‘cester’ makes the same sound pretty much every time it’s used 😂🇬🇧

I live in Loughborough and them saying Logeboroge was so painful

I love the peculiarity of our place names. They are difficult as they have changed many, many times over thousands of years and include ancient names for things associated with their respective areas. Each one is uniquely strange - fascinating and quaint.

Kelsey :"pronounciation is supposed to have rules!!!" Me : it's pro-nun-ciation, love :)

Americans need to chill on the whole "whats with the silent letters or different pronunciatio". Do they know how old english really is? We have the celts who had different forms of old western european languages, Gaelic(different form of celtic languages) romans (latin), vikings(this includes most forms of old scandinavian languages), all three forms of old english and then the single form of old english that was made. Then when the normans came they add french influence to some parts of english(its a misconception that when they came to england we all started speaking french, only the aristocrats and memebers of the royal court did. The commoners spoke what ever form of old english they already spoke, but also used french words for something.) And then slam all that together and in the 1500s the modern english was formed and continued to change in small ways. Thats why some places have letters in the name that make no sence to us now, you also have wales who have a different language(not all welsh speak it) and they say their own places different to how a english person would try to say it. Now go to america and in the 19th century Noah Webster reformed the english-language spelling for america, hence why you do not have a U in colour/color as well as other changes. Basicly america does not have the history of the language thats why you may have simple spellng of place names. But us brits were english comes from have the history of the language, so we also have the remains of the different forms of english. Its that simple.

Bicester home to a designer outlet, Aberystwyth home to the university that prince Charles attended prior to becoming Prince of Wales to study Welsh, Chiswick nothing dramatically interesting happening but not too far is RHS Kew Gardens. Loughborough home to a famous university known for sports science and High Wycombe just a nice area to live.

When you’re from near some of these places and just start crying 😂

I love that one of them mispronounced "pronunciation".

as a proud british man I cried during the entire duration of this video

I’m British and I’ve never even heard of some these 🤣🤦‍♀️

"Bicester" Spell : "Bister" And then they started to asking, why "i" is in there? Im like... It is...supposed to be there...indeed 😑

As a Bostonian, any place with "cester" at the end of it, I definitely know how to pronounce. We have a whole lot of town names that were brought over to Mass including Gloucester and Worcester. We're in New England so it's not surprising lol.

The guy that kept saying “waste of letters” is a whole moood😂

Lady at 6:00 saying why put an "I" there if it's not gonna make an "eye" sound, we pronounce I's like if someone says "ear" but really quick. We are taught to pronounce it this way in primary school...

"*Letters* are a waste of space" Is he forgetting that in American English they don't pronounce the "h" in "herb"?

I have never screamed at my screen so much during a video as when they were trying to pronounce Gloucester and when they were trying to pronounce the towns with weirdly posh accents but just butchered it tragically. 😭😂

I’m shocked by the comments, some uk people don’t know these. Where have you been, under a rock?

For Bicester that’s girl said “why put an I when it’s not an I sound” what’s she on yes it is 😂

6:55 "Woosestershowersasauce" ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I'm dying.

Leicester would’ve been another good one LOL

stop questioning our language, bruv u didn't make it

In Welsh (so for Aberystwyth) the 'w' and 'y' are vowels- 'w' is pronounced like 'ooh' and 'y' like 'ih' or 'uh' - so there's actually loads of vowels :)

"This is just a game to you all writing these town names" These towns existed before your entire civilisation, so no

There's a place in Scotland called Milngavie but is pronounced mulguy.

Bless them they're so confident when they start

These names have been around longer than America (as we know it) so vowel shifts throughout the years have made a big impact on the pronunciation

Dude in the video: ‘no, there has to be rules!’ Me (a not native English speaker): explain why it’s pronounced table and vegetable.

I WISH I could go to a “Shakespeare camp”, that sounds really cool

That guy was so annoying talking about how unexpected the pronunciations were and all the extra letters but American English has extra letters and weird pronunciations too

They say it in an ‘English’ accent but some were welsh and they speak a different language for there cities before England took over. There isn’t a British accent because I don’t sound northern Irish or Scottish but they are in Britain.

We had friends from The UK when we lived in San Diego. The best story they told was of a man who was born in England to American parents, who named him after their favorite place in the country. When they asked him his name he pronounced his name as spelled, something to the effect of "Lie-Chester. " Apparently the one thing his parents didn't pass on to him is how his name was pronounced in England. Our friends, by the way, were from different regions--he from Liverpool, she from Cornwall--so there were times when they didn't even understand each other.

Why does everybody love London?? 😂 it is literally the most likely part of the UK you would get stabbed 🤦‍♂️😂

Me: laughing at them not being able to pronounce any of them. Then the last two came up me: wtf

“Making up sounds and adding in letters” it’s our language sis hahahaha we made it

Natives of Massachusetts are very familiar with many of these... Worcester, Gloucester, we got ‘em too!

I loved this I love in Worcestershire near Worcester and listening to you try and say these towns has made my day. I with being dyslexic I have found these towns hard to say myself so hearing you guys try has shown me that it’s not only me who finds them hard to say xx

I’m from the U.K. and even I can’t pronounce some of these 🙃