Trivia: Mispronounced station names

[hexagon789]

Yep....and it's uscita - without the h!

Reminds me of the Rome Metro announcements:

Prossima fermata - Spagna.
Uscita lato sinistro.

 

[InOban]

Swiss German is significantly different from received standard German.

 

[Parallel]

P.S. Wonder which is the most often mispronounced Welsh railway station name?

GWR at Gloucester have their announcer say ‘Ton doo’ for Tondu - it wouldn’t surprise me if more got that wrong.

I hear ‘Betsy Coid’ a lot for Betws-y-Coed, but it should be ‘Betoos-uh-coid’ I believe.

The announcer at Birmingham Intl gets quite a few wrong in Wales - ‘Talsarn-noo’ for Talsarnau, ‘Aber-urtch’ for Abererch, ‘Leen guirrell’ for Llwyngwril and ‘Lan dud noe’ for Llandudno. I imagine many not from Wales would make the same mistake - I’ve heard Llandudno said like this a fair few times.

 

[davart]

Elsecar and Wombwell in Barnsley used to be pronounced 'Els-car' and 'Wooomwell' instead of 'El-see-car' and 'Wum-well' on the automated announcement years ago.

I'm not sure if this is still the case as I don't take the same trains regularly these days.

 

[richardcoughla]

Harringay Green Lanes is one some people spell it as Harringey. Never heard anyone pronounce it as Harringey but I might be imaging it but didn't Silverlink have Harringey on its signage?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Elsecar and Wombwell in Barnsley used to be pronounced 'Els-car' and 'Wooomwell' instead of 'El-see-car' and 'Wum-well' on the automated announcement years ago.

I'm not sure if this is still the case as I don't take the same trains regularly these days.

I managed to convince some non-Yorkshire folk that Wombwell was pronounced "Womble"...

It looks plausible at least!

 

[SargeNpton]

Harringay Green Lanes is one some people spell it as Harringey. Never heard anyone pronounce it as Harringey but I might be imaging it but didn't Silverlink have Harringey on its signage?

Harringay is an area within the London Borough of Haringey

 

[Meerkat]

It would be good if contributors gave (what they think are) the correct pronunciations when listing how places are incorrectly pronounced please?!

 

[richardcoughla]

Harringay is an area within the London Borough of Haringey

That would make sense!

 

[Pigeon]

I hear 'Betsy Coid' a lot for Betws-y-Coed, but it should be 'Betoos-uh-coid' I believe.

It depends how fast you say it.

At the risk of derailing the thread, or taking it a bit too far from the intended track, I am reminded of a case, not of mispronunciation, but rather of mistranslation.

This misfortune befell a Guardian(iirc) travel writer, documenting his train travels through the Czechoslovak countryside at the end of the 80s.

At one point he was plauding the small and picturesque village of Vychod, completely oblivious to the fact that the sign on the station platform meant 'way out', a confusion very eagerly pointed out by a number of subsequent correspondents!

The Russian for a railway station is vokzal. Guess why...

 

[Caboose Class]

@Pigeon asks: The Russian for a railway station is vokzal. Guess why...
Named after Vauxhall in London. The Turkish for a bus station is otogar. guess why...

 

[vic-rijrode]

@Pigeon asks: The Russian for a railway station is vokzal. Guess why...
Named after Vauxhall in London. The Turkish for a bus station is otogar. guess why...

Named after a small island off the coast of New Zealand?

 

[Caboose Class]

Named after a small island off the coast of New Zealand?

No, it's actually derived from the French autogare.

 

[cosmo]

On a Tyne Valley line train to Hexham a while back. The guard, on slowing down for Prudhoe:
"Ladies & Gentlemen, this train is now approaching Prudda. For the benefit of those ladies & gentlemen who've recently bought houses in Prudda, this train is now approaching Prood-hoe".

I had the rare-ish treat of catching a ScotRail unit on a Tyne Valley service just the other day - and the auto announcement system was convinced that the latter pronunciation was correct... in stark contrast to Northern's system which gets it right!

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Ah sweet memories! Just up the road from the village I grew up in. It was notorious for people not from the area pronouncing it incorrectly. As was nearby Alresford.

A wonderful town home to the delightful little Watercress Festival, offering free heritage railway rides, samples of farmhouse fudge and sales of an exceptionally delicious Watercress dip… ooh, I could really go for a breadstick dipped in that now! Pronounced “Alls-ford,” of course.

 

[urbophile]

It depends how fast you say it.

[re. Betws y Coed] either way, the 'y' is a schwah (neutral vowel) and not an 'I' sound.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

@Pigeon asks: The Russian for a railway station is vokzal. Guess why...
Named after Vauxhall in London. The Turkish for a bus station is otogar. guess why...

I thought there was a discussion a while back on here that called into question this rather comical etymology. It definitely sounds like an urban myth.

 

[Calthrop]

I thought there was a discussion a while back on here that called into question this rather comical etymology. It definitely sounds like an urban myth.

Thread A Language Question, in "International Transport" sub-forum, OP 19 / 1 / 2021; actually started by myself (if I try to do a link to a thread, I always screw it up -- sorry). Russian word voksal is discussed there, among other things. There are various suggestions as to its origin: general conclusion would seem to be that it does come from Vauxhall in south London -- either: from ( a bit convolutedly) Vauxhall pleasure gardens there (antedating the railways): among the prominent places served by Russia's first public railway, running out of St. Petersburg, was a pleasure-gardens set-up there, called a Russianised form of "Vauxhall" after that in London -- for some reason, that word was taken up by the Russian language as meaning generally "railway station". Or else -- the members of a Russian fact-finding mission to Britain in the 1840s, investigating the new form of transport with view to its introduction into Russia: mistakenly seizing on the name "Vauxhall", after the station in London, as meaning "railway station" in English -- Russian thus borrowed the word.

In the same thread there were noted, various languages which have borrowed the French word "gare" for station: including Turkish -- gar therein, meaning railway station -- so by extension autogare / otogar. (Isn't the French for bus / coach station, actually gare routiere?)

 

[61653 HTAFC]

That was indeed the discussion I was thinking of- though I couldn't remember what the thread was, where said thread was, nor what conclusions (if any) had been drawn!

 

[Graham H]

In a similar vein, there appear to be numerous small hamlets and villages in North Wales which are all called 'Llwybr Cyhoeddus', this based on the number of green signposts that you get to see pointing to them all.

P.S. Wonder which is the most often mispronounced Welsh railway station name?

Not sure of that but at the risk of ridicule I was driving through central Wales on the look out for the Central Wales line to sneak a few pics when I came across a sign to Gorsaf Station which threw me as I was looking for Builth Road Station so briefly assumed I was lost

 

[Calthrop]

Not sure of that but at the risk of ridicule I was driving through central Wales on the look out for the Central Wales line to sneak a few pics when I came across a sign to Gorsaf Station which threw me as I was looking for Builth Road Station so briefly assumed I was lost

Endless misconception-related fun, in / between many languages, can be had with the process as here -- quite a number having been cited in this thread. Maybe a source of "Tower of Babel comedy", which deserves a thread of its own !

 

[daodao]

Gorsaf Station

That's like all the rivers called Avon in England, or places/streets in South Wales called Brynhill.

 

[oldman]

Or else -- the members of a Russian fact-finding mission to Britain in the 1840s, investigating the new form of transport with view to its introduction into Russia: mistakenly seizing on the name "Vauxhall", after the station in London, as meaning "railway station" in English -- Russian thus borrowed the word.

This theory really is, as said above, an urban myth. The word was first used in Russian in 1777 - for a pleasure garden; naturally it was used in 1837 for the Pavlovsk pleasure garden, which was part of the railway project - a way of generating traffic. General use for a station building started later - Dostoevsky uses it in the 1860s in both senses, Tolstoi uses it in Anna Karenina (1870s), but the first dictionary to define vokzal as a station building is as late as 1891.

 

[Merthyr Imp]

Not sure of that but at the risk of ridicule I was driving through central Wales on the look out for the Central Wales line to sneak a few pics when I came across a sign to Gorsaf Station which threw me as I was looking for Builth Road Station so briefly assumed I was lost

That's similar to when I came to live in this area and wondered why Gwesty Hotel was such a popular name for them.