Pronunciation of words

[Hilldodger]

Corrected for accuracy

Well actually it's anyone born more than five miles from the centre of Leicester and quite a few born within that area, too.

 

[XmisterIS]

The whole country is North of me, so you're all inbred Northerners as far as I'm concerned!

 

[potsy]

[quote name='swee'pea99' timestamp='1288265319' post='1448826']
"sez", "et", "har'ss", "garridge", "missch'v'ss", "aitch".


My mum used to get mad at people who used 'firstly' ('The word doesn't exist!')

I saw a thing on the telly recently that said until recently - ie, within the last 100 years or so - dropping the H on certain words was not only acceptable but positively required if you didn't want to be considered common. 'Herb' (still pronounced 'erb by well-educated WASPS on the US east coast) and hospital being just two examples. It was suggested that words like hospital gained the pronounced H precisely as a result of Victorian paranoia about H-dropping among the aspirant middle classes. (Truly posh people will still refer to 'an 'otel'.)


[/quote]


[quote name='threebikesmcginty' timestamp='1288267849' post='1448905']
Let's not make this a North Vs South thing, potsy, you common northern git.






[/quote]
I'll 'ave u no,I'm a poshie,I say 'otel

 

[Martok]

It's definitely "aitch" not "haitch" for the letter H. The argument that it's the latter because it should have a "huh" sound at the start as that's what it makes in words like hospital, hotel etc is utter rubbish. If you followed that logic then you'd have pronunciations for other letters such as

f - "feff"
l - "lell"
m - "memm"
n - "nenn"
s - "sess"
w - "wubble woo"

 

[Andy in Sig]

It's worth remembering that some pronunciations which people think are wrong are actually preservations of ancient Anglo-Saxon pronunciations.

That said, I baulked the other day at reading that the original (1930s) BBC pronunciation of Housewife was hussif. I suppose that is where "hussy" comes from as in, "Pray take no notice Algernon, she is but a hussy".

 

[Arch]

w - "wubble woo"

Oh, we should all start to use this! Especially giving out web addresses...

Incidentally, has anyone else ever noticed, it takes longer to say 'www', than the phrase it 'abbreviates', world wide web. There are 3 times as many syllables in the 'short' form....

 

[TheDoctor]

Kiwi English pronounces www as dub dub dub

 

[Hover Fly]

My pet hate is when southerns say 'carsul' when they mean castle and grarse for grass.

"Father" sorts the men from the moisturiser users.

 

[John Ponting]

There are a bit on Radio 4 Today programme about evolving pronunciation of words. Examples of word pronunciation that seem to be changing include 'says', 'ate', 'harass', 'garage', 'mischievous' and the letter H. There was some chap from the British Library or somewhere who wanted to tape people reading from a Mr Men book, so as to study the change. So, how do you say them?

says or sez
eight ot et (ate)
harass or harass
garage or garage
mischevous or mischievious there is no I after the V
aitch or haitch the H is not only silent but is also nonexistent.

I was born in Lincs but schooled and live in Herts.

Had similar differences between school French teachers - one was classically educated in Paris, one studied French near Marseilles and one was a French Algerian.

 

[John Ponting]

If you're interested in this kind of thing there are a couple of websites where you can click on ares of the UK and here bits of the relevant dialects. It's particularly interesting to click on your own area and here a recording made some years ago of an already old person and see how much pronunciation has changed.

Sorry Andy - please take it as light hearted but there seem as many ways of spelling common words as there of pronuncing them.

e&oe

 

[Over The Hill]

What's new? Isn't it always changing?

I would say it is ever improving and growing but the kids have got Jamie Oliver on TV in the next room which is rather flying in the face of that.
He just said "they ah lie leaw parsaws on the plaher".

 

[Arch]

What's new? Isn't it always changing?

I would say it is ever improving and growing but the kids have got Jamie Oliver on TV in the next room which is rather flying in the face of that.
He just said "they ah lie leaw parsaws on the plaher".

But surely there have always been people talking like that. The difference is that these days, they are allowed on the telly.

If you ever see a news report, or something like That's Life from the 60's or 70's, and they do vox pops in the street, you'll see that nearly everyone features talks quite 'posh'. Either they only showed the ones using RP, or people automatically adopted it when faced with a microphone. These days, recording and video is so commonplace, people are more themselves....

I think I'd rather have Jamie Oliver than Fanny Craddock.

 

[punkypossum]

Communial instead of communal really bugs me! And why do people have to call skeletons skelingtons, it makes me feel like I'm living in a permanent Tim Burton movie!

 

[Yellow Fang]

Communial instead of communal really bugs me! And why do people have to call skeletons skelingtons, it makes me feel like I'm living in a permanent Tim Burton movie!

I was under the impression you were a German lass. You must have gone pretty native.

 

[Chutzpah]

I remember reading in a Bill Bryson book that the pronunciation of bath or barth changes every 30 miles going North from London.

Not even 30! I grew up in an area 10 miles outside of Bath.

Local residents call it 'Barth'.

We all call it "Baff".

We're obviously not posh enough out in the c'untryside

IMO most residents call it 'Barth' just to make it sound posher than it really is, when in reality it's just a cramped traffic jam of a city.