Why are British place names SO hard to pronounce? as explained by Map Men | Reaction 

How many people missed the joke about "just who were the complete anchors who invented these rules" ... - as in silent "w"

"He laughed, he laughed....He laughed way more than i think was necessary". LMAO

There's a lot of fantastic Jay Foreman videos that are informative and very funny!

8:30 I love how she immediately latches on to "Portishead!!!" ...and right there she reveals her excellent taste in music.

8:05 - Yes, "Woostersher" is a correct pronunciation. But, just for the sauce, a lot of people just say "Wooster" sauce.

All of Jay Foreman's videos for the last few years are amazing. Very nerdy.

The 'er' -v- 'ar' thing in Derby is a result of the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) that happened between about 1350 and 1700. Certain vowel sounds drifted higher in the mouth. But, at a time when few people could write, some place names (Derby, Hertfordshire) and occupations (clerk) were so well established that no-one thought to change them just because the pronunciation of newer words did. 'Er' was pronounced 'ar' - Chaucer has Absalom in The Miller's Tale kiss someone's 'ers'. But nothing is clear-cut and there are exceptions. Also borough, burgh, brough, bury, etc., are all from -burȝ or -burh, meaning a walled settlement. Original pronunciation was with a guttural g.

Regarding the Norse suffixes (e.g., by in Grimsby), many of them are still very easy to understand for modern Scandinavians. "By" is still used in all the Scandinavian languages. It means village in Swedish and town/city in Danish and Norwegian. "Beck" (e.g. Holbeck) means stream, and in Sweden "bäck" still refers to smaller streams. "Kirk" means church (Swe: kyrka, Dn/No: kirke). "Thorpe" means smaller house or secondary settlement ("torp" in all contemporary Scandinavian languages). Etc.

not far from where I live, in Yorkshire, is a village named Appletreewick - pronounced Aptrick by the locals

A few close to home: Trottiscliffe, the sings were changed to how it was said Trosley ('s' pronounced like a 'z'), and then changed back again. A set of small villages called whiteball, redball and apparently another one, all are basically small hills with predominantly one kind of tree on them. Quite close together. Then there is the odd 'perntorfell' hill. 'pen' 'tor' 'fell' and 'hill' all mean the same thing. 'Hill'.

Spanish is precisely one of the easiest language to read correctly. Nearly every letter has a single pronunciation, with very few exceptions, and the rules always work. So if you know the rules (there aren't many) you will know how to read it 100%.

I mean I’m decent with Old English, and Old Norse I love the etymology of place names in England. I always like to talk about the major cities. My favorite is probably York. It was called Eoferwīċ(e͜overwiːtʃ) in Old English, and Jórvík(jorwiːk) in Old Norse. In both languages the name literally translates to Boar-Bay. Anyway how did we go from those to York? The w in Old English is usually cognate with the v in Old Norse. The Northumbrian dialect of Old English changes the eo diphthong to io, so the local Northumbrian population probably called it something like Ioferwīc(i͜uverwiːk). At some point through a mix of the languages the common name became something like Iorc/Ierc, or Jórk for the Danish population sounding basically like how it sounds in Modern English but with a trilled r. In Middle English it started diverging a bit with Yerk, then Early Modern English Yarke. I presume locals probably held on to pronouncing it as “york,” and it’s lasted until today but of course English lost its rhoticity.

Greetings from Scotland! YES, I can confirm (I was born in South Wales) that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch really IS a place in North Wales, Anglesey! It translates (loosely) as "St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave" more or less. Nobody actually says the full name though, it goes by Llanfair PG. Welsh is more than a little quirky for non Welsh speakers because it has things like - NO letter V for instance. However, it does have the "sound" V or VEE. How? Well we use a single letter F as a VEE sound and two FF's as an F or EFF sound! It gets a lot worse for non speakers, like one single L is said and sounds like L but we also use two L's together (e.g. Llan, which means church) and there is no way I can type that sound, you need to hear it said. Anyway, you get the sort of idea........ Great language to speak behind the back of non-Welsh speakers, and YES, they do that too.......... Because I have lived in Northern Scotland for 50 years, when I go back home, some people think I and not Welsh and I have great fun letting them babble on before I speak to them in Welsh! 😂 I know, it's sick, but such fun, how can I NOT do it! 😊

Glad you’ve discovered Map Men and Jay Foreman. Some fantastic videos on the Tube.

Map Men is an excellent channel. They're really funny, though some people might not immediately get their humour. I also had a mispronunciation experience in New York, although to be fair I was 12 at the time. I asked someone, either a railway employee or a cop, how to get from Manhattan to Syosset but I said "Sigh-Oh-Set". He just said "Sigh-Oss-it?" and then told me how to get there :) The weird thing with Worcestershire (woostersheer) sauce is that most people just call it "Wooster sauce", missing the "shire" out completely!

Fantastic reaction, your comments were really interesting and I have followed Jay Foremans channel for years now, he has a ton of informative videos and they are funny too! Keep up the good work!

YES!!! As a Brit, I’ve been known to embarrass myself when pronouncing American place names/street names/peoples’ names. As for Australian place names? That’s just taking the piss. Edit: 8:05 Wuss-terr-shear.

0:14 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 'CAMMUS', and Ireshopeburn is 'EYES-UP-BURN'.

Apart from the obvious Edinburgh one you already mentioned another that instantly comes to mind for me is from a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland called Milngavie. You pronounce it Mull-guy. Also on a side note all our train stations have the names in Scottish Gaelic as well so if I ever find myself bored on a long train journey I can try to pronounce those. (for example the gaelic for Milngavie is Muileann-Ghaidh)

Yay! My home town was the first example Go Frome!

PS. Susie Dent's books on various strands of etymology are a fun read. She also does daily etymology on the twitters.

Keighley, where my Dad was born. A market and mill town in West Yorkshire pronounced “Keithlee”. Drayton Beauchamp (Beecham), Chesham Bois (Boys), Lymm,

MAPMEN!!!

Im very glad you found this; I really like their channel. Their style of comedy is also great!

Auchterarder, Auchtermuchty, Achiltibuie, Hawick, Milngavie........all in Scotland and all trickier than Frome

I am a native of Worcestershire. Best way to pronounce the sauce is "Lea and Perrins"

There’s a village near me in northern England called Torpenhow, which is pronounced locally as “Tra-pen-a”. Oddly the name is made up of three ancient words all meaning hill, so can be translated to modern English to have a meaning of “Hilly-Hill-Hill”. Apparently each group of settlers who took over the area added their word for hill onto the existing place name to describe the area as being hilly 😂

I'm from the UK. Specifically I'm from a county in England called Berkshire which is pronounced "Bark-sheer"

For some reason what interests me about place name pronunciation is when two places spelled exactly the same are pronounced differently, but by stress. Newark, NJ and Newark, Del. are a good example. Newark, NJ is stressed on the first syllable, which almost makes the ark sound like erk. Newark, Del. is stressed on the second syllable, almost like you're asking a question. New ark? The second syllable is very clearly ark. And those cities aren't that far apart.

That sauce is WUSS-TA-SHER sauce, or simply WUSS-TA sauce as you don't need to include the county affix. Training an American tongue to drop the hard R can be difficult.

vowel shifts, cultural changes, language changes and origins from Europe and local areas - all part of the history of the English language, you can thank our beautiful friends all over our fantastic continent for their input. Certainly makes me feel connected to a wider community than just little old Britain.

I also enjoy looking into history etymology and semantics. Quite happy to have come across your reaction. Also even he ate and bled he mentioned when the vowels began to shift, he was referring to the ‘great vowel shift’ that may be something you enjoy looking into.

If you're interested in some historical linguistics, I recommend two Rob Words videos : "How anyone (including YOU) can read German" and "How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)", and after these two, one video from Jackson Crawford (which might not be suitable for a reaction video) "Grimm's Law and the Regularity of Sound Changes". (Edit : I'm adding "Corresponding Cognates" by Simon Roper, pretty good one too, although it might also not be suitable for a reaction video. I like Simon's videos, but he often uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, which makes his videos harder to follow for the uninitiated, but I just discovered this one which barely uses any IPA.) I think those videos are a good introduction to the concept of regular sound changes, as well as other concepts in historical linguistics.

There's a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, as well as a few streets, and a small town in South Australia called Cockburn. For some reason the 'ck' is silent, so it's pronounced co-burn, with the vowels slightly clipped.

I'm from Sheffield and we have an area near us called Penistone... which is luckily pronounced "penn-iss-tunn", but it does get a pretty good laugh from visitors.

I can recommend all of the Map Men video's.

Just to make it even more complicated. There are two towns in England with the same name. One in the South West and one in the East. They are pronounced completely differently. Mildenhall - in Norwich it is pronounced as you see it Mil-dun-hawl - However if you are in the town in Wiltshire, South West, it is pronounced MY-nəl

Here are a few to have a go at: Bicester = Bis'ter, Abercynon = Abba'cun'on, Fowey = Foy, Cholmondeley = Chum'lee, Ruislip = Rye'slip, Beaulieu = Bew'lee, Hereford = Herri'fud, Leominster = Lem'ster, Gloucester = Glos'stir, Worcester = Wus'stir. There are many more, but these are a start.

Magdalen College, Oxford is pronounced, maudlin. Sometimes we just do these things to mess with everybody. I like the way everyone on the news started pronouncung Kyiv differently after the invasion, even though it's apparently no closer to the Ukranian pronuciation.

In West Yorkshire, we have the famous village the Bronte sisters came from Haworth, which is pronounced. Howath. Also very close by is Keighley pronounced Keithley

Arkansas vs Kansas. It's actually against the law to pronounce Arkansas as "Our Kansas" for official business.

Hi from Derbyshire 😊

There's a place near(ish) to Glasgow called Milngavie, pronounced 'mull-guy'.

Can confirm that Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch is a real place and that's it's actual name and the sign for the train station is comically huge. Locals kind of truncate it to "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll" which is looks super hard in English but when said in welsh, all those 'double L's' are a single letter with their own unique sound so it does actually flow quite nicely.

Okay, any jay foreman music video is an amazing experience of silly dry humor 😂 That aside, every written thing in map men videos has a few gags in it. Worthy to pause and read

We're not immune to it in the states either. For example: Des Moines, Iowa is pronounced roughly like its French name implies "deh moin" But one state over you have Des Plaines, Illinois. And sure, you might think "Oh, another French name! It must be pronounced like "deh plain"!" But no, it's actually pronounced "dez planes" 🤷‍♂️

You would probably enjoy studying Old English and Middle English. They really make the English language and pronunciation make sense. We call English a Germanic language because Old English was, but Modern English is roughly half from Old English and half from Old French. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, when Middle English began to evolve, French flooded the English vernacular and a lot of words were taken from Old French like mariage (which became marriage) and language. Some of the new French words had Germanic counterparts, and many of those counterparts survived into early Modern English but fell into disuse after the 1600s. Some of them remain today but are used differently. For instance if someone say they're getting wedded, it sounds a bit archaic, but if they say married it sounds more modern. Also, even though wedding and marriage are essentially the same thing, wedding is used today for the actual event and marriage for the institution of being joined by a wedding. If you look up the descendants of words that got entirely replaced by French words, you'll find many of them do have a word that survived until about the late 1600s. Modern English really is half Germanic, half Romance language.

There's this city here in Portugal called Olhão that I think if I wasnt portuguese it would be a nightmare to pronounce just looking at it. I think only portuguese speakers can 100% nail the pronounciation though. Edit. remembered another tricky one: Guimarães.

Loughborough, north-east of Birmingham is one name that catches out a lot of people outside of the UK.

You pronounced Worcestershire a lot better than most people outside the UK. I've heard it pronounced War-sester-shire more than once

Nice video and your willingness to learn. Respect to you.

until 2021 we had a town called Fucking nearby, and it was not pronounced how you want to pronounce it (the fu- sound is like in full, not like in fun)

Hello from East Yorkshire in the UK 👋😃 Great reaction video, always refreshing to see some well presented positive fun content. There's a small market town in East Yorkshire called Market Weighton. The 'Weight' in Weighton is pronounced 'Weet' "Market Weeton" Non locals often stumble on this one, but it doesn't help that locally, the town is also referred to by it's old name, "Wicston", meaning dwelling or dwelling place. Take care 😁

Hunstanton is pronounced Hunston for some reason. A bit like the surname Featherstone-Haugh being pronounced Fanshaw.

Yes, the Welsh name is real.

Yay! I'm from Frome and we spend an inordinate amount of time correcting people.

Hello 😁

I've lived in Triangle, Sowerby Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Luddenden Foot. I used to think they were strange names but the more I travel, the more I think they're pretty tame.

Worcestershire being pronounced as wu-stuh-shuh is one thing that cannot be forgiven, I don’t care how much time it has had to have been bastardised lol

Belvoir (Castle, pronounced beaver), Magdalen (college, pronounced maudlin), Mainwaring (pr. mannering), Ralph and Ranulph (Fiennes, pr. rafe and ralph respectively), Menzies (Campbell, pr. mingus), Beaulieu (pr. byoolee), Beauchamp (pr. beecham), and the ever-famous Featherstonehaugh (pr. fanshaw)

North Carolina has a bunch of place names which are hard for people to say right. Conetoe, Rutherfordton, Mebane, Fuquay-Varina, Pfafftown, Uwharrie, Chalybeate...

The Map Men are worth checking out as all their videos are good.

I only discovered Towcester as "Toaster" when I heard it on the radio a couple of months ago. I'm born and raised in the UK and I still get a lot of these awkward places names incorrect 😂

USA, Arkansas. It is apparently still illegal to pronounce it Ar-Kansas.

So glad you're reacting to map men / Jay Foreman. 😊

Loved your narration. We had our home in Llanfair P.G. for 30 years.

there's a ton of local place names that are destined to be mispronounced. there are a lot of places called 'Hulme' (the L is silent) and a place not too far away called 'Levenshulme'. the fun I've had with people getting it wrong is a lot! (commonwealth games in 2002 and a very frustrated bus driver trying to direct tourists to hotels not in the city centre because 'bus drivers know where everything is') I've heard it called 'Lee-ven-shull-me', 'leven-shoolm'. it's almost painful sometimes, but, it is 'leh-vehns-Hyoom' (phontic) but there are a ton of places that make Levenshulme' look easy. it would be different if I went to the states and decided to call it 'Ah-mur-Ree-kay'.

My english teacher told me, in general, if a word is longer than 3 syllables, only pronounce the first 2, then just mess up the rest into one sound, and I would be fine...

Two towns near my dear old mum spring immediately to mind. Happisburgh and Stiffkey, which are of course pronounced 'Haysbra' and 'Stewkey'!

In the USA you have the Koch ( Coke ) brothers, but here in Australia we have a morning show presenter called David Koch ( Kosh ). Even names can't escape their expected pronunciations...

As someone with a standard English South African accent I'd say i sound like a mix between British and American pronunciation. I would say 'Darbyshire' exactly like an american bar the rhotic R's.

love your reactions 👍🤓. much respect Birmingham UK 🇬🇧.

1:49 Name on weathermap: Unfortunately I don't speak welsh but I think I recognise it as the name of the town with longest trainticket from the Guiness Book of Records. Apparently they had to issue a special ticket for traveling to that town. The name is detailed decription where to find that town. I just looked it up at wikipedia as 'Llan' and found this translation: "[The] church of [St.] Mary (Llanfair) [of the] pool (pwll)[22][a] of the white hazels (gwyn gyll) near to [lit. "over against"] (go ger) the fierce whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the church of [St.] Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (-ogo[f] goch)"

Your "derbyshire" was perfect

Ive worked in customer service/security in London for many years and listening to American tourists attempt to say "Leicester Square" is a gift the keeps on giving.

In my area there is the river Teign (Teen). The town at the mouth is Teignmouth (Tinmuth - home of Muse). Further up river there is Bishopsteignton (Bishops-tane-ton) and Kingsteignton (Kings-tane-ton - known locally as K-town). All this in the Teignbridge (Tinbridge) council area. Outsiders don't have a chance!

Scotland is full of unexpected pronunciations, such as Milngavie, Strathaven or Kirkudbrightshire, probably because they use roman letters differently to map celtic sounds onto them than they do for English.

I think the most fun letter combination in English is "ough". It has numerous ways to be pronounced. Bough Cough Ought Though Through Thorough etc. Have fun learning English.

For reasons I won't bore you with, I have several times visited the Devonshire village of Woolfardisworthy, which locally is pronounced "Woolsery".

'Qatar' gets its pronunciation from two things The first sound is a Q/K consonant pronounced at the back of the throat, and is not something that is found in european languages (to my knowledge) And the vowels are arabic short vowels that are deemphasized in pronouncing the word

There is a suburb of Glasgow called 'Milngavie' which is pronounced 'Mull-guy'. I live near a town called Lewes which is pronounces 'Lewis' and not 'Loos" as many people think.

From the north Norfolk coast, Happisburgh locally pronounced Hays bru. Or also in Norfolk Costessey locally pronounced Cossy.

Comedian Ben Brainard has a series of hard to pronounce city names by state. (And a lot of other things, but this was relevant to your topic.)

Interesting that you've got a friend in Derbyshire which is my neck of the woods! If you ever come over to visit them then I'd be happy to give you some recommendations of interesting places to visit in the area!

The first place that came to mind was Gloucester, Massachusetts, but that's not fair because it was named after the city in England (pronounced here as Glahster), so let's go with Cairo, NY; pronounced as the American- English word "care" with an "oh" at the end (CAIR-o). Greenwich, Connecticut is another good one, pronounced Grenich, but again, it's the British influence. I guess Boise works too. OMG, there are a lot.

Well done saying Derbyshire

In queens English or southern English we put an "R" in in some words like bath is pronounced barth. The Worchester Sause would be pronounced w-oo-ster sause.

In the north of England there’s a town spelled Irishopeburn but pronounced I-sop-burn tricks a lot of people

Lee and perkins Woostershire sauce. Cook a steak with this stuff and if you do it right. you WILL make any of your little children who are carnivores do ANYTHING for hours. Just for a bite... You have such a lovely smile. Just seeing you smile, makes me smile. You have such wholesome content. I'm so glad you and this channel exist...

In the very south-east of England, names begin to shift again, especially in the smaller place-names. - hurst meaning 'clearing in the woods', for example.

Slough (rhymes with how) is a confusing one for a Northerner, since there are a lot of places like Mereclough (-ough as in rough). That'll probably be the Danelaw they were talking about. I once heard an Australian mispronounce Loughborough (luff-bruh) as "loo-ga-ba-roo-ga" and was rather confused.

I pronounce Qatar the same way you do, but my son in law was over there in the USAF and he says it like cutter. I also pronounce Worcestershire the same as you. I believe that to be the common pronunciation, at least in the US.

One of our favourite seaside towns when I was growing up, is Happisburgh. Tourists had no idea that the name is pronounced, Hazebrrr

Yes Llanfair P G is genuine, though it may have been - emphasised a little bit for publicity purposes. Beaulieu ('Bewley') is one that I lived near to. From the French 'beau lieu' - beautiful place. Launceston ('Lornston') in Cornwall. And Fowey I believe is pronounced 'Foy'. Teignmouth - 'Tinmouth'. Salisbury - 'Sawls-buh-ree'. Greenwich - 'Grennitch'. Harwich - 'Harritch.' High Wycombe - 'High Wikkam'. Oddly, Keighley in Yorkshire is not 'Keeley' but 'Keithley'. And Berwick (upon Tweed) - 'Berrick'. (Not Barick, even though Berkshire is 'Barkshire'). There are thousands more.

A common one I hear in London regarding Leicester Square (an area in the West End area) and indeed Leicester City, itself, is hearing people pronounce it as “Lysester” instead of “Lester” - phonetically.

I love Map Men! If you enjoy etymology, I highly encourage you to check out Simon Roper. He has an invitingly easy pace, enjoyable narration, and he’s very thorough with what he does! He has a couple videos where he acts as an Old English speaker living in the modern day, but all his videos are fascinating!

First time here. Struggled to keep up, your beauty bedazzled me. True.

I think this happens in every country, it took me a while to realise Arkansas didn’t have the sound Kansas at the end

I always watch your videos till the very last second, where you shoot me with your wink 😊

“Is there a cow in Moscow?” By Charles Harrington Elster is one of my favorite books of pronunciation and grammar, it was a recommended book in a college course.