Over the years I've been exposed to numbers of different cultures and it has been fun to learn what I could about their idioms and accents. It was interesting to learn something about the Thai culture, their way of writing and their accents. To me their writing seems oddly similar to Hebrew, not that I know anything mind you.
I spent 7 years deeply immersed in very conservative Middle Eastern culture such that when I was speaking Engish to others, they would often ask if I were from the Middle East. This also seems to show up in my feeble attempts at writing because I have had lots of PMs asking what country I came from.
As far as I can discern, we were likely religious fanatics thrown out of Alsace, or Switzerland, so we fled to England and we were later thrown out of there and schlepped over to 'merica, where we made our way from Virginia to the west in the wave of invading and terrorizing the existing inhabitants.
Today I was reading a news story about the Queen's cold and how she is delaying her trip to Sandringham and began to wonder about the proper pronunciation of the word. Americans would pronounce the "h" while I believe that in UK English that "h" would be silent.
If I could roll the clock back to my beginning perhaps I would study Anthropology, Linguistics, and religions, though I would not likely get as involved in latter.
Gwen
Comments
Pronunciation
UK pronunciation can vary greatly between regions. The are certain regions that are more likely to drop the h. In the case of Sandringham, the ending can vary. Quite often such names get pronounced with an '-um' sound at the end. If the 'h' is said at all, it would be soft and not emphasised.
Norfolk, the county where Sandringham is located, is famous for having some of the weirdest pronouncements in existence.
Wymondham is a good example. Locally it is spoken as Wind-um.
The other famous example is Haysborough. This name is used in the shipping forcasts and is the name of the sea area off the Norfolk coast. This is said exactly how it looks, hays-borough. However, although this is the spelling used on sea charts, the village it is named after, although pronounced the same, has a different spelling: Happisburgh.
A list of thirteen of these oddities can be found on the website of the local newspaper: http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/listen_are_you_pronouncing_these...
The pronunciation ...
... of Happisburgh probably won't be a problem for much longer as the place is rapidly disappearing into the sea. We were cycling in the area a few years ago and went to find the cafe our companions had used before but it had disappeared - literally. There's also a Wymondham in Leicestershire which is pronounced as it's spelt (except the 'h' is usually silent).
Americans also have difficulty in pronouncing our nearby city of Derby, which, as everyone knows is pronounced Darby.
you can't win so don't even try :)
Robi
I Say Tomato...
I once heard an American ask for directions to Hawick, a small town in the Scottish Borders. He pronounced it 'Hor-wick', which left everyone flummoxed until they worked out that he meant the place they call 'Hoyk'.
There's a district in Sunderland called Southwick, pronounced either as it looks, or as 'Suthick' or 'Suddick' depending on which part of the city you're from. And there'll be at least three centuries of unbroken world peace before agreement is reached on Houghton-le-Spring.
It gets worse...
Not too far from where I live is a small settlement called Bosporthennis. I'd be interested to see your guesses as to how it's pronounced :-)
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