Why are British place names so hard to pronounce? 

no, it's when the French hear Vikings shouting Latin at Germans.

@@psychodrummer1567 no, it's when anglo-saxons watch vikings and romans yell at germans

my favorite is "English doesnt borrows from other languaga, it drags them to dark alley where it beats them and robs them while heavily breathing in their ears"

More like, "When Celts learn Latin then German and use Old Norse to yell at French Vikings..." 🤔

Modern english is 'spelled' - the ruling caste fiddle with the words - for manipulative cultural disintegration effects. Now they tell people that the commoners used to be as nasty as the ruling caste are ... having destroyed the old culture, and schooled everyone, they now control the stories ... and the narrative of today too ...

You can speed up the process by drinking a few pints of bitter.

Isn't it how pronunciation works in general in most languages?

@@whoeverest_the_whateverest No. Lots of languages are fairly regular in their pronunciation. If you know how to spell something in, for example, French, German or Welsh, you can be pretty certain of the pronunciation. That is not true at all of English. There are also languages such as Chinese where you cannot derive any useful information about the pronunciation from the spelling so you don't even have a starting point unless you already know the word.

@@joshuarosen6242 yeah no.

@@deservingcomplexionm8111 no yeah.

the only solution, of course, is to invite back the Romans. your food will get better if nothing else

There is a village called 'brain creek' in Austria and a town called 'cat's brain' in Germany

NOT THE BOPPIDUM

​@@manmanman2000there's a Catbrain in Bristol too, near Cribbs.

We have one in Massachusetts, USA as well. Whatta name.

My favourite thing about Braintree is that there's a 'secret nuclear bunker' which is signposted everywhere on official road signage

Poursmuff I think you'll find thanks very much!

That’ll do!

@Tyler Yuan Frome!

@Tyler Yuan Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

I spat my tea out at this one....Hilarious !!!

They actually already did that joke in this video, so you're not being original. Thanks though.

@@timh2356 are you stupid or acting dumb?

@@williamg209two normally people like them don't respond as they normally realise (or not) that they just made a r/wooosh

As a cyclist i thought froome in my heade because that came to my head yet i was still surprised by it

@@williamg209two He's not saying "Oh, didn't you realize that comment was from the video?" He's saying "Repeating a joke from the video isn't funny." I don't quite agree (While it's not funny in a "let me tell you a joke" way, it is a shortened way of saying "I liked that line, did you like it too?" which I don't see a problem with.), but I wouldn't say he missed the joke. If anything, you misunderstood him.

Saxons, eh?

I mean, how should they know or even guess?

@@elpapa68 By watching Map Men and reading the youtube comments, of course!

Didn't you watch the video? We don't have time to acknowledge such things! The tea market doesn't monopolise itself!

Loughborough?

It's pronounced more like Luff-Bruh... Bruh... I'm an Indian and had a hard time wrapping my head around it..

@@Shinjkr enlighten me

@@Shinjkr you silly pickle

@@Shinjkr ye

Should've said Ports-Mouth xD

yes. the very brief reasonless wig wearer's wig.

It's Pompey, anyway.

Had a Fry and Laurie feel to it. Amazing.

i come from a place called thisvideoisshit

(slow clap)

@@samgamgee6508 I have achieved comedy.

@@MTRfundamentalist that's a good one hahaha

@@MTRfundamentalist Achievement unlocked! Comedy

Programmers and English people, the two genders.

My personal favourite is Wye in Kent. Love hearing it come up as though the bus or the news are having an existential crisis

Usually but not always. Berkeley is not pronounced Barkley. Hartford came from Hertford but spelled with an a.

As a midwesterner who lived in the Boston area for a couple of years, I (quite sensibly) thought "Peabody" was pronounced like "pea body" and "Leominster" was pronounced "leo min ster." My new neighbors found this briefly confusing and then hilarious ("Do you mean 'pee buddy' and 'lemon stir'?").

I'm from Nova Scotia, and when I mention places like Truro, Weymouth, Dartmouth, Preston, Halifax, Liverpool (my home town!), Chester, Yarmouth, Colchester, Richmond, and others, you'd think I was talking about England. But the British tourists love seeing these places!

@@davidyoung5114 I love the name, Halifax, for some reason.

@@kenb3552 And did you know that a person from Halifax is called a Haligonian?

HOLY HOLY!!! I can proudly say that I have the two HOTTEST women on this planet as MY GIRLFRIENDS! I am the unprettiest RU-vidr ever, but they love me for what's inside! Thanks for listening thomas

I think this is the third time they've done it

@@reimarpb Really? I thought they usually repeated the word 'men'.

@@AxxLAfriku Axxl really should be blocked from most channels, it's basically just a spambot. @Jay Foreman

Spoilers!

"Church" is "kirk" in Scots too.

In Dutch it’s kerk. Only the vowel is different.

I agree, but there's a caveat... Many place names contain the same word as others, or are just very similar. Like 'Hirwaun' and 'Hirwaen' for example; but there's loads. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the names are also just words for certain things; like 'LLan', which is 'Church.' So it kinda just adds difficulty of another kind, rather than pronunciation

Oh God... I prefer to use the generic name "That place in Wales" for all Welsh towns.

@@Evan490BC Welsh is purely phonetic, unlike English. If you are not interested in what the names MEAN, you can learn how to pronounce them fairly quickly. And unlike English those pronunciation rules stay the same. The most important thing people need to remember is that the Welsh Alphabet is very different to the English Alphabet. People often complain Welsh has too few vowels for example, it has 7 compared to 5 for English (Y and W are vowels in Welsh, not consonants). Also some sounds are represented by two letters, LL for example, there are others including CH, NG, FF and DD. When you realise for example that Llan is not four letters, but three, with the LL having a specific sound it starts to make more sense. I have less trouble with Welsh place names than with English because of the huge number of pronunciation traps in English, which literally do not exist in Welsh.... Also helps I speak Welsh.... But for pronunciation that does not matter. You can learn how to pronounce Welsh fairly easily without having to learn to understand it.

@@alganhar1 Thank you very much for your detailed explanation! I must say learning how to pronounce Welsh sounds tempting. I will give it a try!

i agree however, the welsh language is a sin so no

*May contain :D And yes. Have a like

Not suitable for use as a lawnmower.

No you haven’t now brush ya teeth m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OEuaNorcY1c.html

:-)

He said British not English , you are so wrong I won't even bother explaining.

But adult Horrible Histories is Horrible Histories

Underrated comment XD

...Portsmouth

@@BennyJ69 Yes.

but better

I'm not sure what you mean by 'like it is written'. I'd probably pronounce it as rhyming with jerk. South werk. Probably based on the city of Newark New Jersey. What about you?

It's spelled "throatwarbler mangrove" but pronounced "Raymond luxury yacht"!

The city I'm from was originally called "Castell Newydd ar y Wysg" which is literally a description of what was there at the time. This got shortened down to "Casnewydd". In English, it's "Newport", for some reason. there are a few explanations (wikipedia suggests the old port was the Roman one in caerleon) but as far as We're concerned it's totally unknown why it's called that. there wasn't even a dock there at the time.

Wie have like 200 places called "Neustadt" in germany...("New city"). Founding new cities was all the rage in the 13th century.

​@@siarhian10maybe some medieval humour in there

If you enjoy funny ads, you should check out internet comment etiquette with Erik. Btw i love your videos mr. Beat, you're my favorite social studies teacher.

Second to internet historian I'd say.

I see that you too are a man of culture, Mr. Beat.

Ad-verts, ad-verts Ad-ad-ad-verts verts (Verts)

Also Drew Gooden does really funny adverts

Me too

Original video for those curious:👌 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fHxO0UdpoxM.html

Well, he also was doing sort of a parody.

That's the very video I used to learn it

@@ChallengeCommander He gets the ending slightly wrong.

It's not even a competition, they dominate the field.. like a very assertive rabbit

2nd only to Erik from Internet Comment Etiquette

@avantgardevegan It's also one of the most vegan videos they've ever done. 😊 Hope you are well, Gaz. 💜

Oh, there's at least 5 better mapmen videos than this!

Ure gae

i mean you're not wrong jay went out of his way and spent ages learning how to pronounce llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch though that's brilliant

Favorite* Sorry, as an American, I just had to do it

*is the best version

And there are normally tthree "men"s, right? They only did two this time

As was Jays pronunciation of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, bet he practiced 40 hours a day for that

@@niceperson180 the three men are actually the variation

@@BlueGangsta1958 Sacrilegious

i still dont get why it was named braintree out of all things

@@jamm6_514 the name ‘ Braintree’ is just intrinsically funny, like ‘Penge’.

If you thought that Braintree was a bad name, you ain't heard of one of it's gants names, as the gant near the newsagents in the town centre is called "pig's head in the pottage pot gant". Annoyingly it ain't on Google street view but the sign is located on the red brick wall opposite.

@@jamm6_514 seems like a corruption of the original Celtic name for the place after the Roman name was no longer used.

Having worked in Braintree, they should have changed it to brain death!

Been watching LOTS of your channel lately! Big fan!! :D

@@JayForeman Thanks! I feel like Elvis just complimented my karaoke performance.

I knew it! :D

Needed more Loughborough

Jago I love you

Laaanson not Launston and definitely not Launceston

Edinburgh is sneaky for Americans since -burgh and -burg are pronounced /bɝɡ/ like iceberg in General American English. Edinburgh with US spelling would be written as Edinborough, or Edinboro. Despite knowing the proper pronunciation, I can't help but read it as Edin berg, in my head.

It's pronounced "Eddin-bruh", not "Eddin-burra".

@@welcomeback2mychannel 'Burgh' in Scotland is the same as 'Borough' in England hence why it should be pronounced as such. Depending where you come from in the UK you might pronounce it slightly different but its still not pronounced 'borrow' like Americans think. If you listen to railway station announcements they pronounce it 'Edinburra'' or 'Edinbra'. I think they'd have trouble with Hawick , Berwick on Tweed and Kirkcudbright as well.

@@sugarbertie1143 ... which is also pronounced "bruh". I don't listen to yanks on anything language related, dw.

​@@sugarbertie1143probably. Kirkcudbright is a place I visited a few times as a child, so I know how to pronounce it, but probably a lot of people I know, if I asked them, they'd get it wrong.

@Rodolfo Ramos Anker. ;)

As someone from Ipswich, I’ve never noticed anyone say it wrong, but now can’t get this out of my head 🤣

ough can be pronounced many ways so Slough (where my wife's cousins lived) was often pronounced 'Sluff' but the best pronounciation (by an American on the bus) was Slug.

@@joshporter741 its pronounced ippy

@@konrad7572 Uppa Townnnnn buhhhh

Yes

I been getting into some Jago Hazzard recently too (and he's super prolific)

@@plebjames Jago's Dire Straits video was so good

truly a blessed day

The 2 map men and Tom Scott: the British holy trinity

Gumster Keith leigh

Wymondham Wind-um

Depends on the family-some call ithemselves Chumley, and others Cholmondeley: same with Featherstonehaugh, which can be pronounced as written, or if from the 'other' family, Fanshaw: ditto Powell which can be as written, or pronounced Pole!

Remarkably, Boris Badenov taught me how to pronounce Cholmondeley almost exactly sixty years ago.

Chumly? C H U M L Y ?!

If you think that's funny, go watch the movie Idiocracy. :-)

@@AndrewTJackson the most passive aggressive insult ever lololol

@@junio0o768 I'm not insulting @Lizz, I'm recommending a good movie! :-)

@@AndrewTJackson ok sure

A Homo niewiadomo (a new 2400 species of human) individual: What is the way to Beep Boop Boop?

Close enough

Bugger off and brush your teeth m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OEuaNorcY1c.html

Wasson then cocker!

@Tran Ma bugger orf shurly?

@Tran Ma Frome* :D

Big up the btown massive 😂

So many of these names exist in Massachusetts, as you can imagine. There's a Braintree in the Boston area.

I mean Braintree is way nicer than Skegness(the physical manifestation of the word shit) or many other horrid places in Britain such as Wales or Hell I mean Milton Keynes, or the home of depression... Luton...

I keep imagining a tree with brains growing on it instead of fruits...

@@electron8262 come to the town and you’ll realise no brains grow here 😂

Head up to New England for a little taste. Take a quick drive between Worcester (Woostah) and Leominster (Lemon-stir).

@@pseudotasuki I am a New Englander lol

@@christopherdeangelis6383 Well… okay. Fair enough.

+@@pseudotasuki I always got so pissed at Worcester's pronunciation, but 5:33 kinda helped me understand though. I'm finally at peace.

@@christopherdeangelis6383 Me, as actual American: 💀

Criminally underrated, this comment

East Somerset represent!

@@peterjackson2697 yessirrr

amazing

Haha cars go vrrrrome

And Australians?

I'm an American and your impression impressed me. You pretty much nailed it. Yee haw!

Brits have eyes between their tooth gaps

@@Alkatross Ah, but he didn't get to the few exceptions, such as for those of us from New York City who periodically throw in a EYYY I'M WALKIN HEAHHH to our YEEHAWs

@@DeusSalis but do either of them have tooth gaps, also every child in England that has wonky teeth get braces free, completely free. About 30 percent of brits get braces

@The smore emperor just visit Braintree and get one lol

Darn tootin indeed

I have two hot RU-vidr girlfriends and I am the best RU-vidr ever and YOUR savior. Good bye dear aidna

Judgement day is 2200-2400 accordingt to this video... when it changes from Wrr to "Beep Boop Boop"

Two map men episodes within one month??? The end is nigh

Coincidentally I am also semi regular

At least the end will be a bit sweeter

Sorry I ruined your 69 likes

@@theoceanistblu9346 Haha funi sex number

An open letter to Loughborough: Dear Loughborough. Seriously? The "lough" rhymes with tough? No other place in your country does that as far as we know, so your name feels like a prank. Are you sure? Please check your records just to make sure. With love, America

He should have pronounced it "Port's Mouth". Not only because "mispronouncing a completely different city" is funny, but because, American here, that's how I pronounced it for an embarrassing number of years, and it would just make me feel better. ... or worse, come to think of it.

@@robspiess I think there are plenty of Portsmouths in America.

@@NexebNoXV To be fair, the US has a couple weird ones, as well. Arkansas, for example. Especially bad since Kansas is a thing.

Llanfairsomething

Me too

Liar

imagine listing to imagine but being covered by imagine dragons and this is left on for no good reason //ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fVJKfsRXUiw.html

@@harroldyoungling1481 why would I listen to Imagine Dragons

Whats worse is that places that sound exactly how you say it and mispronounced anyway e.g. Bangor. Despite what southern english think its not "Ban-ger" from Bangers and mash.

I've just been exploring New England in Google Maps and came across Swanzey. I mean, seriously? Still, if it gets people to pronounce it right, that's one thing, I suppose.

@@dropit7694 Bangor in Wales or Bangor in Northern Ireland? Similarly, there are Newcastles in England, Ireland, and Northern Ireland.

Bangor? I hardly even know 'or.

@@qwertyTRiG There's also a Bangor Maine.

i wake up to the smell of maple syrup in canada

@@MsZsc freshly delivered by your mail moose i assume?

And it is true here in Australia that we wake up and shout 'Wooloomooloo', as we all do.

@@evedaser24 Fairilee dinkabum, matey!

Aw :)

Us Yorkies are nice folks. Glad you had a lovely experience.

Nah, I think American English is weirder (despite being more mainstream nowadays), I would never notice that a person saying Ahlah-bahma is saying anything wrong.

@@LovelyAngel. You would be deemed quite a fancy if you pronounced it that way. The truer southern pronounceation would be closer to owl-la-bama.

@@LovelyAngel. Eh, pronunciations all over the world are weird in some way. There are definitely non-phonetic ones in the US that only a native or someone who’s been here long enough would immediately know, but I think some of these British pronunciations are bonkers and hella non-intuitive, so like they say in the video, you can’t blame a non-native for assuming it’s pronounced one way when really it’s said a completely different way that doesn’t align with basic English spelling/pronunciation rules. The way I see it, and this goes for everyone, is that if one is so insistent on a visitor pronouncing something the local way, I’d hope they’re polite enough to make an effort to pronounce it the _other_ local way if they ever find themselves in that other part of the world, rather than claiming their one pronunciation is the “right” one.

I have some Wrrr sauce in my kitchen cabinet.

Thanks to a grandson's mispronunciation we now call it "Shoosher sauce" in my family.

Cyu hn m’tht wrr sos

@@hecatium4473 Sos!

Americans already do that

init i was surprised thats the most mispronounced

Somerset is number one!

@@YTPEXPERT I'm actually across the border in Wiltshire.

I'm from Manchester yet I knew how to pronounce Frome. I just like knowing stuff, but I draw the line at Celtic names. There's always an exception to any rule (not necessarily, but it's a good get out).

@@Sceadusawol I did suspect this. Still... Somerset is number one!

If that law became official then every American visiting Britain will be in prison by now

@Gizio the Jackal al'n w'k

Or sent to Australia

Sad. Many such cases.

@@AdamTheMan1993 Not a place name, but every history podcast by Americans pronounce Geoffrey as Joffrey.

Ah, really? I was assuming that Frome was one of those examples where "u" got closed over to distinguish it from the vertical lines of the adjacent m (similar to "sun"->"son", "wunder"->"wonder" etc)

Oh crap that's interesting. In Arabic Rome is pronounced as 'room'. Wonder if it's related.

For 'Rome' this is likely true, but other words would not typically have been pronounced as /u:/. /oʊ/ was pronounced /ɔ:/ before the Great Vowel Shift, so /u:/ would not have been on its normal trajectory (we have some direct evidence for this; Shakespeare rhymes "alone" with "gone," which wouldn't have been homophonous with "goon"). was different, because the Old English variant already existed.

@@major7thsharp11 you telling me Old English wrote Rome as Rūm? How did they get there? I mean that's also how the Arabs wrote it.

@@XaliberDeathlock The Arabs wrote it like that because Classical Arabic didn't have an /o:/ vowel, so they used the closest vowel they had. The similarity to Rūm in Old English dialects is just cosmetic, I'm afraid.

If you go there you would understand!!!

That's pretty much what it means in modern English too. Grim could be used in "grim tidings" (bad news) or "mate, that's grim!" (that is disgusting) etc.

@@Afreon Just like Grimmauld Place in the Harry Potter stories is supposed to sound like 'Grim Old Place'

Hard to take your comment seriously when the place isn't called Grimtsby

@@barbaralloyd7993 I strongly suspect you never have.

Now now, being from Grimsby you should know that none of the villages matter and are just part of Grimsby. Great Coates? Grimsby. Laceby? Grimsby. It's all Grimsby

@@asuspicioustype12classfrig80 it’s we’re people move to pretend they don’t live in Grimsby 😅 but true grimberians know

I loved your tom scott video, who is next ?

What's next? Basically A Jay Foreman Video?

Oh hi, Matt!

@@AVeryRandomPerson hopefully

The fact that Matt watches MapMen is one of the least surprising things I've ever heard

W H A T

@@tito_zz9217 indeed

The name comes from football fans’ exasperation:- “god Manchester United are on tele again!”

I live next to Godmanchester and trust me no one has ever pronounced it Gumster. It’s either pronounced “God Manchester’ or ‘Goodman-Chester” by locals

Having worked there most people call it God -Manchester not gumster did you know there is a stately home on the Main Street through!

“Harry potter and the year no-one got a haircut”

I wonder if he is related to daniel radcliffe.

@@iaw7406 no

@@AlecWindmiller they have a similar ethnic background and they do look similar so its unlikely but still possible that they are related.

@@iaw7406 Everyone is related to everyone else if you go back long enough.

I thought that honour belonged to the village of Penistone? (penn-is-ton) t the sign is now a literal piece of granite

@@Ravenesque There's loads of Penistone signs and most don't get stolen - basically because there's fuck all there, aside from the name to laugh at! Source: used to live there, still find it funny.

Is 'Lost' in Scotland ? I believe hat was/is famous for losing signs.

@@millomweb ...As is 'Fanny Street', in Saltaire.

@@nicholasalexander4743 Titus' daughter ?

I live 5 mins from there, it’s in Nottingham, and btw we see goatman on a daily basis I honestly don’t know what we would do without him

Did-- did you just make a HermitCraft reference?

Doc.

You goatme. XD

The buses there have the batman symbol on them, just to add to the confusion 😂

Why is this place called Beve...

I live in Leicester, and have found that even some people born here, get that one wrong😀

That is the most crazy poem I've ever read. Doesn't look like it should work but it does amongst other things

@@2760ade I live in Leicester and I've never seen this poem before but it's brilliant 🤣

For those finding this difficult to read: The lady Matilda de Belvoir Was such a persistent deceiver That the Bishop of Leicester, Although he confessed her, Would seldom, if ever, believe her.

The do it a lot, watch season 1 of map men and they do little variations on the intro all the time

And removed a man

@@thatotherted3555 when I first moved to Aberystwyth I thought it meant Pass of Fire and thought “wow that’s exciting.” One place around there I’ve never understood the meaning of is “Cnwch Coch” pronounced “CNOOCK CORK” with rhaspy Ks like in scouse. I know Coch is Welsh for Red, but never got to the bottom of what a Cnwch was, even after speaking to local fluent welsh speakers.

@@richardsmith2370 interesting! I don't know any Welsh at all, but I just looked up cnwch as it reminded me of the Irish/Gaeilge word for hill, cnoc. According to wiktionary both descend from the proto-celtic 'knokkos' (hill). Cnocc in old Irish also would mean lump/swelling apparently, and a 'Wales Online' article says cnwch is a word for swell. So cnwch coch means red hill/swell/mound? :) all the best!

@@eleanorcawte532 thanks for the info. That kind of makes sense, thinking of where the village is located.

@@richardsmith2370 There's a part of Aberystwyth called Buarth Mawr (I lived there for my second year at uni, it's basically between the railway line and the A44) and I was told that it meant big hill. When I mentioned that the dictionary said 'buarth' meant yard, they told me, "no, that's a Northwalian thing".

@@IndigoJo yes the difference between northwalian and southwalian dialects can be very confusing. I speak southwalian but I would say hill is “Bryn” in southwalian and Buarth is a enclosed space like a courtyard, walled garden or school yard. However Aberystwyth, being where it is, on the north-south divide does through out some welsh curveballs. I know a Farm near there called Troedrhiwlwba. Troed and Rhiw would come together to mean “foot of the hill” so I guessed the hill was called “Lwba hill” but the farmer who’s family has farmed there since the year dot said, “No! Lwba means middle-sized” so it means “Foot of the middle sized hill”. However, to this day I’ve never come across the word anywhere else.

Famously (to us in MK, at least) all the standard ways of saying those words. Weirdly, I couldn’t imagine any of those being said differently. Woughton is obviously Woofton. Loughton is obviously Lowton.

/ˈləʊtən/ or /ˈlaʊtən/ though?

@@gurrrn1102 its ow! Like you’ve been punched in the nose.

Just to confuse it even more, with Loughton, as a Cockney speaker I'd pronounce it... Lau'en, lol.

Fellow MK'er, Everyone I know hates how we say buckinghamshire, or phonetically, buckunamsher

Lool

As far as I can tell, the letters are still there, but the sounds have been lost.

That simply needs to change

Happisburgh, anyone ?

@@millomweb Yes, one of my fovourites too :-D

Sitting here cackling at how ridiculous that is. I thought Milngavie was bad ("Mill-guy")

@@vincentmoon9187 Not 'mull guy' ?