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Comment by willtemperley | Hacker News Reader

Even locals can't decide on pronunciation - Shrewsbury is pronounced as it is written unless you're posh, when it becomes Shrowsbury.

https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2015/06/27/shrowsbury-or...

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If you're on a Transport for Wales train you'll hear it said as Amwythig as well. There's a surprising amount of Welsh names for English cities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_exonyms#United_Kingdom_(...

Bicester is another canonical example. Pronounced like "Mister" with a "B" in place of the "M". I don't think a single native English speaker would correctly pronounce Bicester on their first attempt.

The elision of the 'e' in -cester placenames so that the 'c' and 's' have a single sound is reasonably common e.g. Leicester, Gloucester, Worcester, Towcester, Bicester. So English natives should have a reasonable chance of getting the pronunciation of a previously unseen example correct.

I have heard even Manchester sometimes spoken that way as well, depending on who you’re talking to.

It's not even unreasonable. -caster, -chester, and -cester are related suffixes.

All descending from the Latin "castrum", which means "fort". So if a placename has one of those suffixes, chances are high that it was a Roman settlement.

Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire, although now pronunced by most people as 'God-Man-Chest-Er', used to be pronounced (and may still be by some locals) as Gumster.

And then along comes Cirencester.

Sissiter according to the locals in the old days, Siren when I was growing up in nearby Swindon.

And that's why "Worcester Sauce" is the second most mispronounced culinary term in Germany (after "Stracciatella") *

[*] - according to my made-up-on-the spot stats

Also doesn’t help that it’s actual name is “Worcestershire sauce” which is even more difficult to say.

Now I must know: how do Germans pronounce stracciatella?

Some switch around the "s" and "sh" sounds, so it is pronounced roughly like "shtratsiatella". "st" at the beginning of a word is pronounced as "sht" in German.

Similar to Worcester.

If you take the M40 to Bicester, you pass by High Wycombe.

Anyone remembers the character of Raymond Luxury-Yacht (pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove") ?

https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Raymond_Luxury-Yacht

The river Nene apparently rhymes with "been" in Peterborough but "Ben" in Northampton.

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