You all invented the “hay-ch”, so I don’t want to hear your complaints.
Ed’-in-bu-rah
I felt rather silly when someone had to tell me how to pronounce Berwick.
More than one policeman is going to do the arresting; the police are a collective. One police officer, a bunch of police. You don’t say “A police came into my store today…”
As a returning volley, all you English people need to stop abbreviating “vegetables” as “vedge.” Stop, just stop it right now.
See, the -burgh ending on Edinburgh throws us off. We want to pronounce it like Pittsburg or like the German Brandenburg. Edinburgh is familiar enough to me that I know how to pronounce it, but I kept getting another city that ends in -burgh (can’t remember which one) wrong until my British MIL said “like Edinburgh.” Besides, you have to admit that “burg” makes more sense as a pronunciation than “bur-ra.”
Having dealt with Edinburgh, how about tackling Gothenburg?
Yeah, but there’s no ‘e’ after that consonant in Iraq or Iran. Ire is pronounced eye-r because of the ‘e’ at the end. Or so I was led to believe in school.
Iraq and Iran should be pronounced like the I at the start of Italy.
‘ZZ Top’ is the name of a band, so we pronounce it in the way they choose to. It’s nothing to do with the pronunciation of the 26th letter of the alphabet.
Agreed! Y’know, Americans criticise Aussies (and NZers!) for dropping letters, but at least we know that there’s an H in front of herb. We’d only say 'erb if we were playing sillybuggers. 
Oh, but one thing that does bug me? Aluminium. None of those letters are supposed to be dropped, but somehow they drop an entire syllable* and end up with ‘illuminum’. I am embarassed to admit that until my early 20s(!) I actually assumed that America had some kind of high-tech housing construction material called Illuminum. :eek:
- This will make it harder for them to create aluminium-thremed haikus. Poor devils.
Edinbrugh. Sort’a comes out as IinBRA, using Spanish phonics…
Bites -
We drop the second ‘i’ when writing it, too.
“Aluminum”
Spelling it “Aluminium” would be just silly! Anyone can hear that there’s only one ‘i’!
Most people pronounce it “Edinbuh”, IME. If there’s a hint of the “gh” sound, it’s only very slight.
Morbo- That’s how to say Edinburgh with an American accent.
It’s somewhere between Edin-burra and Edin-bruh.
Those people seem to be saying Ed-in-bur-ah.
Still, I suppose it’s better than Edinburg.
Personally, I don’t like the American pronunciation of “route” and “router” as “rowt” and “rowter”. It’s just grating.
That’s not just an American thing. It makes Australians snigger when we talk about “rooters”, for reasons that I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
I would cast another vote for “erb” as the most jarring American pronunciation. And “premiere”, pronounced “pruhMEER” - I know, I know, it’s an English word now so doesn’t have to be pronounced the French way, but it still makes me wince.
Hah! Now that’s just not acceptable. At least officially make it illuminum. And make it sparkle. And light up from within. 
Give me back my childhood, where I really thought you guys lived in houses like that. So many sitcoms mentioned ‘illuminum’ siding! I knew what ‘siding’ was - even though I’ve never heard that word used here, either; weird how I got the context of the one just fine, and messed up the other so badly. I assumed you were living in pretty, glowing houses.
Later, I reluctantly upgraded the mental image of ‘illuminum’ to probably be some lightweight, high-strength thing that very likely didn’t light up from within.
But was probably still pretty. darned. shiny.
Only to purposely annoy.
On the subject of zed vs zee - it’s worth mentioning that in the UK, zebra and Zebedee are pronounced with a short e as in zed, not zeebra or zeebedee - so it’s not as if we’re entirely inconsistent.
I’ve got one - that I’ve mentioned before.
Spackle.
Always sounds like a preschooler word to my ear, not matter how often I encounter it.
Sunspace writes:
Ah, but you do have the all-powerful (although sometimes incorrect) internet. If you go to the Wiki page on diapers, you find:
Hence the “checkered history of diaper”. Sorry. I hate it when people don’t get my etymological jokes.
another vote for herb, sounds like a hiccup to me.
does ‘nuclear’ count?