<<Loughborough completed defeated most Dutch people>>

As does Scheveningen for most non-Dutch people.

I'm going through my picture collection (pre digital) looking for my picture of that town in Wales which is said to have the longest name in the world...any of you know it?

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch

Miserable little place. The name is it's most interesting, and made up, feature.

Can you pronounce it?

..just call it gogogoch!

It's generally referred to as Llanfair PG. Mind you, most people have trouble with the Welsh double L.

Not to mention the rest of Welsh pronunciation .

Not to beat this poor old horse, but . . .

"<i>Try doing the search.....just put in leicester</i>

If you had just put in 'leicester' at the time you topped this one, you would not have found this thread -- because it was well outside the 3 year default search range.

Now, of course, it will come up first because it has been topped.

So I guess we'll never find out how you dug up this old thing . . . .

On to pronunciations . . .

We've mostly mentioned the tricky one-- but LOTS of visitors even need help w/ easy ones like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Elgin, Bath, Bicester, Alnwick and the Thames

OOPS - >>it was well outside the 3 year default search range<<

that should be --- 1 year default and 3 year maximum search range . . .

The search engine has a 3 year maximum RANGE, so that a search between June 2004 and June 2007 would have found it.

laverendrye: "<i> . . . so that a search between June 2004 and June 2007 would have found it.</i>"

Yep - that was my point. You HAVE to enter those dates - and khunwilko claims s/he only searched for 'leicester'.

So s/he must have been looking for REALLY old threads to top.

I insert no t year range - just do the search...i did it again to test and it came up the same.

Another point that visitors to UK seem get wrong is "SHIRE" - on it's own it is "shy-er"

but at the end of a word - e.g. county name - it regains the schwa sound - "shugh" - "shə"

So Worcestershire is wuss-tə-shə

warwichshire - "worrickshə"

Well I'm English and Warwickhire would sound more like Worrickshear the way I say it. Definitely no schwa.

I'm an expert on schwas speaking Dutch

Another Cornish one: Launceston, pron Lanson.
Leominster BTW is Lemster.

quite right hetismij - that's how I'd say it and my grandparents lived there.

As uncle George used to day "you say ghoti, I say fish".

One of GB Shaw's play on pronunciation.

michel - i think that "foreigners" can be forgiven the problems that they have with english pronunciation, as evidenced by this conversation with my DS, aged 19, today. [and I should explain that despite his A levels, due to a specific learning problem his spelling is at the level of your average chimpanzee]

me: "two jobs for you today, mowing the lawn and filling in your student loan form"

him: "well, at least they both begin with LO"

me "LO?"

him: "yes, LOan and LOrn"

me: "!*^&!!!"

khunwilko: "<i>I insert no t year range - just do the search...i did it again to test and it came up the same.</i>"

Of course it works NOW. You topped the thing so now there is no need to plug in any dates. It has July 2010 activity. It <u>didn't</u> at the time you located and topped it. So you would not have found it unless you purposely searched for OLD threads. But enough of that -- I was just honestly curious and I guess we'll never know how.

Yes it did

Ah worrshear or "shugh".....this is a bit like bath or "barth".

my Mum would have said "shear" - or at least told you so - but actually if the word comes up in normal conversation - try taping this; I have - you actually hear the "schwa" sound most of the time.
There is also a shift away from the shear pronunciation as it has "class" connotations that people try to avoid.

There are of course strong social and regional variations in UK and even "schwa" gets pronounced differently.

........both my parents and I lived there...and my Great Aunts.....they would deffo have said "Worrichseeear"

mind you they had a very strange greeting too

Air! Hair! Lair!"


BTW - Birmingham = "Brum" or earlier "Brummigen" which became a word meaning "cheap and tacky"