Designed to Confuse Our US Cousins

I came across this limerick, an excellent illustration of how speakers of 'American English' have problems in England.

'A wayward young cleric from Leicester
Unfrocked Mrs Hughes just to teicester.
He kissed and carreicester
Undressed and posseicester
And then, as an afterthought, bleicester.'

I imagine that shifted her vowels!

Strange, as an Aussie (with a Latvian backgroung) I understood each and every smirk...
of >1 CliffordDorset:

Also, I have LOVED "The 4 Yourkshire Men" since boy...

PS. I could of course link you to the 4 Y...

Should I?

#2 Yes

I love that limerick! And I love how I can never be sure how to pronounce British names.

ETA I figure you can just say the words really fast and with a slur and you'll probably get close to the right way.

For >2 guido47:

A classic

Thank you, Guido. I laughed myself silly. :)

There's a few American places that are spelled and pronounced as differently as some British places - not many, though. My aunt and uncle live in Worcester, MA - pronounced Wooster.

>7 jjmcgaffey:

(From a previous post to another group)

I have a friend who lives in Aslackby which is pronounced aze-ul-by

But Norfolk (UK) is the place you want for strange pronunciations. Some of the best are

Happisburgh pronounced Haze-bro (the o is almost a schwa)
Wymondham pronounced Win-dum
Tacolneston pronounced Tackle-stun
Ranworth pronounced Ranner
Letheringsett pronounced Larn-sett
Hautbois pronounced Hobbies

And locals call Norton Belleau "Blo Nortun".

There are many more. I think only the Happisburgh and Wymondham pronunciations are likely to be known across the UK and even then there are going to be some who get it wrong.

Norfolk, VA, US isn't bad either. I can tell a non-native to the area in an instant. The native pronunciation contains no "o" sounds and no "r". `Nah-fuk.

Not to mention all the wonderful Native American names around here. Kecoughtan, Powhatan, Poquoson. Although those are less germane to this discussion, since the pronunciations are relatively straightforward.

>9 timepiece: Is that really the same thing though, or just a local accent? I mean there are lost of places (Bwaston, New Yawk) where a place name has what others would consider an odd pronounciation just because their local accent pronounces certain vowels differently.

Possible. It's kind of hard to tease out the difference between "correct pronunciation" and "what the locals *consider* correct pronunciation".

But hearing Nore-folk with all letters pronounced still sounds hysterically funny to me. And people who move into the area do tend to fall into the local pronunciation after a while, even if they don't pick up the accent otherwise. And this being a highly military area, there are a *lot* of people moving in (and out).

I knew about the local pronunciation of Norfolk VA because someone who'd lived there told me about it and then went on to try to convince me that cheerleaders there had this in their repertoire: 'We're from Norfolk! We don't smoke! We don't drink! Nor folk!'