kirgit.
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Trivia: Place names that you're not sure how to pronounce
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Hobun I thoughtAgain, sorry if these have been mentioned, but:
Gloucester
Worcester
Holborn
Hanborough
Gloss-ter, Wuss-ter, Holl-born*, and HANborough! Not HANDborough!
Just some small ones which people get wrong. Holborn comes from Anglo-Saxon and the others I'm not sure about.
-Peter
*Pronounced more like "Holl (as in hollow) - bun"
hexagon789
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It depends on pronuncation. The thing is that Holborn comes from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn said:
-Peter
Entertexthere
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Machynlleth, I can never pronounce it!
Easy, just forget the spelling! Mack (or Mach - as in the airspeed) - un - thleth. If a Welshman refuses to understand that then they are just being difficult. Just like Paris Metro booking clerks refuse to understand what you are asking for ( they used to anyway...)
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Dr_Paul
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I'm a monolingual English-speaker, but, as I used to go up to Wales for holidays and volunteer work on the Ffestiniog Railway, I did try to get to grips with the Welsh alphabet so I could pronounce the town and village names correctly. And it is pretty easy once the alphabet is learnt: the alphabet is more or less 'what you see is what you pronounce', quite unlike the baffling if entertaining variations in my native tongue.
Dr_Paul
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'Obun', surely, with the emphasis on the 'o'.
Traveller54
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Hmmm, I can see some passengers being directed to the west of Scotland instead!
krus_aragon
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Well, there was already talk of sending London Underground trains to Harrogate..."This is a Piccadilly Line train to... well.. Scotland? Is that right?" Wow
-Peter
alxndr
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I can never remember if Frome rhymes with "room" or "home".
‘Froom’
On Temple Meads in the 1970s they were pronounced "Luffbrull," (like "Edinbrull") I'm not sure about "Peterbrull!" We definitely had Adexes to Spaldling for the tulip festival, or whatever it was...of course there is Luffbruff and Peterbruff.
61653 HTAFC
Veteran Member
Like the cyclist Chris Froome.
The dropping of the second 'k' in (Wakefield) Kirkgate is more an accent thing than a "correct" pronunciation, but does seem to be universal (apart from PIS robots)... but then that city's other station is often clipped to "Wezgit" by locals.
Ilkeston is one I'm not sure of: is it il-kes-tun, ilk-stun, or (as I've heard a few times) simply ilson?
Amazing - I'll be on the first trainWell, there was already talk of sending London Underground trains to Harrogate...
-Peter
Amazing - I'll be on the first train
-Peter
You won't, you'll be on the first replacement bus if it's class 230s!
PDG1949
Member
Cholmondeley in Cheshire is pronounced 'Chum-lee'
Apparently Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire is pronounced 'Ozzel-tizzel' by the locals
Apparently Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire is pronounced 'Ozzel-tizzel' by the locals
61653 HTAFC
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Those two remind me of the surname "Featherstonehaugh"... pronounced Fanshaw.
Ilson is also an accent sort of thing. Il-kes-tun is perfectly fine. Ilk-stun is definitely wrong though.
A station name that confuses me is Llwyngwril…. how on Earth do you say that?
hexagon789
Veteran Member
Thlun-goo-rill I think
61653 HTAFC
Veteran Member
The Welsh stations that jump out as awkward to me (besides the obvious Llanfairpwll...) are Rhiwbina (which looks like a blackcurrant drink) and Llywnypia (which I always want to stick "Kensington-" on the front of).
Paddy O'Doors
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Wales has hundreds.
MarkWiles
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That's close enough although as a Welsh learner from the next village, I tend towards "Th-luh-win-goor-ul" because I was taught to pronounce every syllable. However most local Welsh speakers I know from the village aren't so precise and tend towards the "Thlungooril"!
daodao
Established Member
I used to live in Rhiwbina ward (on the site of the old Whitchurch station goods yard), and believe that it is pronounced essentially as it is written in Welsh (Rhiwbeina), i.e. rhioo-bei-na. Welsh speakers are free to correct me.
I've always liked the passage in L.T.C. Rolt's Railway Adventure, telling of a time in his youth (1920s?) when a fellow-engineering-apprentice was sent to Machynlleth to do some work on a Corris Railway loco (no. 4 IIRC) -- Rolt was green with envy. The trip was not a delight for this lad -- a firm native of the Potteries, with no wish to venture into a barbarous alien land
; among other things, he had trouble making understood to the locals, his destination: which he pronounced "Makinilek".A -- lesser -- Welsh pitfall which was new to me, turned up in another thread on this theme (possibly even this one !): a place which no longer has a station, though it once did: Abertillery -- which I learned, is pronounced "Aber-till-AIR-y". I'd thought from way back, that the stress was on the third syllable: false analogy with "artillery", I suppose. Don't think I've ever heard the name said out loud -- and never saw any indication of the correct pronunciation, until reading it on these Forums.
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