# Weird British pronunciation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [May 24, 2018, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738 "2018-05-24T17:08:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/61 "2018-06-02T02:10:46Z")
That is to say, if only one language can be identified as the language “of the locals,” it’s Bambaiya Hindi, for whom “Bombay” and “Bambai” are pretty much the same. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/62 "2018-06-02T05:21:01Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > They got it from Portuguese Bom Bahia. “Mumbai” is the Marathi version of Bom Bahia, not the other way around. That is disputed, and has been at least since the mid-19th century. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/63 "2018-06-02T22:41:56Z")
“Fotheringay-Phillips” pronounced, “Throatwarbler Mangrove.” Let’s not mention, “boot = trunk.” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/64 "2018-06-03T00:39:42Z")
But how did the troubadours pronounce it? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2018, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/65 "2018-06-03T19:32:17Z")
> [@piston\_broke](#): > > Is it kee-o-tay or quik-sot? > [@Nava](#): > > Neither. The correct pronunciation ends in a vowel, which neither of those do 😛 /kixote/ I’m not sure whether I’m missing a joke here, but Piston Broke’s first pronunciation ends in a vowel—kee-o-tay is a way of representing the American pronunciation /ki ˈoʊ teɪ/ ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/66 "2018-06-04T04:44:46Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I’m not sure whether I’m missing a joke here, but Piston Broke’s first pronunciation ends in a vowel—kee-o-tay is a way of representing the American pronunciation /ki ˈoʊ teɪ/ I and every other US Anglo I know pronounce it /ki ˈhoʊ teɪ/ (or, if we’re more phonetically conscious, /ki ˈho te/). ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/67 "2018-06-04T11:45:53Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > I and every other US Anglo I know pronounce it /ki ˈhoʊ teɪ/ (or, if we’re more phonetically conscious, /ki ˈho te/). That /h/ is easily elided. It depends on how fast you’re talking. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2018, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/68 "2018-06-05T14:07:49Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > The _Quixote_ problem is a wretched one, involving changes in the spelling and pronunciation of Spanish, and further complicated by the acceptance of “quixotic” as an English word. Cervantes pronounced it kee-shoat-ay, which no one does now but students of medieval Spanish. [slight tangent]Cool, I never knew that. It makes sense because the Spanish neighbors, the Portuguese, would read “Quixote” as kee-shoat-ay today. The name of Brazilian children’s show hostess _Xuxa_ is pronounced “SHOO-sha”.[/slight tangent] ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2018, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/69 "2018-06-06T01:10:53Z")
Also because Iberians were the first Europeans to extensively contact them, “x” in transcriptions of Chinese and Aztec also represent a “sh” sound. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/70 "2018-06-07T04:05:50Z")
> [@kodabar](#): > > Yet at least once, Menzies was actually men-zeez, as in the former retail chain - though I think that was stylistic rather than traditional. The Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, pronounced his name “Men-zeez”. There’s an apocryphal story to the effect that, one one occasion when he was visiting the UK, the UK Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home (pronounced “hume”), told him that his name was correctly pronounced “Mingiss”. “Really?” he is sait to have replied. “I must remember that when I get hume.” ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/71 "2018-06-07T11:31:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Also because Iberians were the first Europeans to extensively contact them, “x” in transcriptions of Chinese and Aztec also represent a “sh” sound. Nitpick: yes, “sh” for Maya, but for Aztec (Nahuatl), more often “ks.” (The word “Mexico/Méjico” has its own complicated history.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/72 "2018-06-08T01:51:15Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > The Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, pronounced his name “Men-zeez”. > > There’s an apocryphal story to the effect that, one one occasion when he was visiting the UK, the UK Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home (pronounced “hume”), told him that his name was correctly pronounced “Mingiss”. “Really?” he is sait to have replied. “I must remember that when I get hume.” Douglas-Home would probably have been right, though. When the letter “ȝ” was abolished for the crime of not existing in Latin, England generally substituted “y” or “gh”, but Scotland went according to the glyph similarity, and used “z”. —John W. Kennedy, descendant of the lords of Culzean Castle (pronounced “Culane”) in Ayrshire. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/73 "2018-06-08T04:39:31Z")
Menzies was widely know as Ming. as in Ming The Merciless. Wikipedia claims that Menzies preferred the “Ming” pronunciation ???, but gives no reference. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/74 "2018-06-08T20:10:43Z")
“Mingess” for Menzies is probably still the default in the UK, with “Ming” Campbell, the recentish leader of the Lib Dems, as the obvious nationally prominent example. In Scotland, the classic exception was always the John Menzies chain of newsagents. That was always the z-pronunciation. But duly recognised as the weird case. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/75 "2018-06-18T17:16:54Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > Actually I think its Shed-u-al > For some reason the c isn’t pronounced. As noted, blame the French. > [@elfkin477](#): > > No one’s mentioned Quixote, St John, or jaguar yet? > > I remembered being baffled when I learned that Thames doesn’t rhyme with James… Me too. I find commercials for the car amusing with their pronunciation - “jag yu ar”. > [@Shakester](#): > > It’s Americans that mispronounce Jaguar as “jag-wah”. Many of us Americans are rhotic, so we pronounce it “jag-wahr”. There’s an _r_ on the end. > [@](#): > > Everywhere else, it’s jag-you-ah. And if we’re talking big cats, I was completely mystified as to what a “poo-ma” was until I saw a picture and realised it’s what Americans call a puma. Which is correctly pronounced “pew-ma”, in case you’re wondering. > [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Nicaragua > American: Nic a ROG wa > British: Nic a RAG you wa Seems to be the case that Brits want to pronounce “u” with a “yu” while Americans are comfortable with a “oo”, especially on words brought in from Portuguese or Spanish. > [@aldiboronti](#): > > (Does anyone really say key-ottic?) That’s the way I pronounce it when I read it, not that I use the word on my own. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Names: > > Beauchamp - Beecham I knew a guy who pronounced it “Bo camp”. > [@Asympotically\_fat](#): > > The 'wich is pronounced more like 'idge in some place names, e.g. Greenwich (grenidge), Woolwich (wallidge) and Norwich (norridge). > [@Riemann](#): > > I pronounce all three -itch, not -idge. > I’m native to West London. > > I see now that where the pronunciation is shown, Wiki and other online sources seem to list both pronunciations as variants for most of these. With the emphasis is on the first syllable, the difference is barely noticeable, I think. Agreed. > [@eschereal](#): > > That is because anglicized spellings often tend to be messed up. The correct spelling is “_Muileann-Gaidh_”, which, if you cannot read Scots Garlic, looks daunting. If you see a Scottish name that has letters that are not in the Garlic alphabet (j, k, q, v, w, x, y or z), you can guess that it has been anglicized and that your attempted on-sight pronunciation will be wrong. So just what is this “Garlic alphabet”? 😉 > [@eschereal](#): > > Yeah, they also speak a thing that got singed in a plate of poutine, pecked at by a loon, dragged down the big muddy, chewed on and shit out by an alligator, carried around for a while by a pelican before being beaten senseless by the Red Stick, and they have the gaul to attach to it the name of the thing that is spoken in France. Gaul - ha ha. > [@PatrickLondon](#): > > Because it comes from Latin (i.e., the Catholic church) “scedula”, which was pronounced as a “sh”. > > How and why both it and “school” (from the Latin “scola”) came to acquire an “h” in English _spelling_ is another question. You and **John W. Kennedy** need to iron this out. > [@kodabar](#): > > What strikes me as particularly ironic is that so often in American English, the stresses are placed in the French manner, yet any American I’ve heard speaking French mangles the pronunciation and stresses to the point of hilarity. Case in point - garage. In Britain, that’s ga-ridge. In the US, it’s ga-raj (same as the French). But hearing an American trying to pronounce the French, it oddly devolves into a mess. That’s because French is a crazy language that ignores letters that are there and pronounces ones that are not. hors d’oeuvres = “or derv” esprit de corps = “espree deh core” homage = “o mahj” Paris = “Pah ree” There are plenty of other examples I can’t come up with right now, but typically a final “s” is dropped (as in three of my examples). ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/76 "2018-06-18T19:37:25Z")
How about the way the French pronounce Guy. “Gi” I know you can pronounce your own name any way you want. But how anybody gets San San from Saint Saens I’ll never know. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/77 "2018-06-18T20:07:35Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > …So just what is this “Garlic alphabet”? 😉 … I hear vampires hate it. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2018, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/78 "2018-06-27T02:36:34Z")
I’m listening to an audiobook of British author Jeffrey Archer’s _A Prison Diary_, narrated by a British actor. He refers to the athletic-clothing company Adidas as “ADD deh dass,” while I’ve always heard Americans pronounce it as “uh DEED us.” ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2018, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/79 "2018-06-27T05:53:45Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I’m listening to an audiobook of British author Jeffrey Archer’s _A Prison Diary_, narrated by a British actor. He refers to the athletic-clothing company Adidas as “ADD deh dass,” while I’ve always heard Americans pronounce it as “uh DEED us.” As a Brit I think I generally say “Ah-di-dass”! Either way, pretty sure the assistant in the shop wouldn’t recognise “uh DEED us” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2018, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738/80 "2018-06-27T07:34:04Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > As a Brit I think I generally say “Ah-di-dass”! Either way, pretty sure the assistant in the shop wouldn’t recognise “uh DEED us” 🙂 Actually, when I was a wee lass (70s in the UK), everyone pronounced it Ah-DEED-as. Then at some point (80s/90s ish) there was a switch in stress. I remember an ad on TV talking about the Adidas founder, Adi Dassler, which may have influenced things. We also all used to pronounce Nike as Nikey, presumably until we heard it actually pronounced on a Nike ad. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-british-pronunciation/814738.md?page=5)