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Comment by bluepeter | Hacker News Reader

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

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I don't really see that as the same thing as what the article was pointing out. Those are shibboleths that only an insider would know. You have to get the pronunciation of Cholmondeley or Couch "right" to pass for an insider.

The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.

I don't necessarily think it's that... it's just a matter of a rush to respond/send quickly and not take a lot of time. It's pretty easy to either fat-finger when typing on a keyboard, or gesture input on a phone to get the wrong word and you hit send before realizing.

Sometimes I'll notice right after, delete and re-reply (social media) other times I'll just let it be... It's pedantic busy bodies that will single you out for a typo as opposed to discussing the idea at hand.

>It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes.

Interesting, is that the equivalent of billionaires wearing sweatpants?

Yes. It is also the equivalent of heads of states calling other persons dumb on camera. The absolute decomposition of respect and decorum.

Or its a simple signifier that the author was human, and that a real person is trying to convince you of something. I've experimented with putting minor grammar mistakes into my work of the sort that would be frowned upon, but are not strictly invalid. The existence of any kind of mistake makes the work sound "human".

Who said signalling would be limited to just 1 thing at a time?

Don't know about that as a general rule, since spam messages have had typos and mistakes in them since forever, and its precisely what marks them as not trustworthy.

I expect that won't be the case for long. LLMs don't make spelling errors.

More like signaling that a specific human wrote it themselves instead of one of their human assistants. The article is mostly about emails from the Epstein files so non-human authorship wasn't really a possibility at the time they were written.

You could also blame the constant negative press covfefe

The "enriewu" thing wasn't a misspelling of "en route", it was someone's name who had arrived in Miami with Jean-Luc and Peggy. It's probably a misspelling of Henry pronounced in French.

Henry Wu is the Jurassic Park character who figured out how to produce viable hybrid embryos.

Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone"

Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare

That's great. What's also amusing is how you felt it necessary to provide the diacritical pronunciation guide for "Vaughan"... because I think to most native English speakers we can't imagine any other pronunciation!

I think native English speaker who had never heard of Vaughan (sure we can find some of those) would likely to pronounce it like "Vog-un" - /ˈvɒɡən/ or "Vog-han" - /ˈvɑːɡən/

No, "gh" is usually silent in English spelling.

Laugh, trough, tough, rough. Maybe it should be "Vawfan"

Ghoul.

Hiccough.

Loughborough, which has it both ways. (Apocryphally pronounced by Australians as "Loogahbaroogah".)

augh is not as common as ough, but either one can make any sound in the whole syllabary.

How about Sequim, WA. Guess how to pronounciate that.

Or Puyallup, WA. Those two are definite shibboleth tests in the PNW.

Pend Oreille is the eastern WA test for western WA.

and for our eastern neighbours: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (and Boise too)

My years of french class steered me wrong there.

Des Moines, WA vs Des Moines, IA.

No, I don't think they would. I've never heard of Vaughan and assumed one syllable like the parent commenter.

This sent me down a mental rabbit hole, I think it's one of those interesting nuances that are rules that native speakers follow without being able to name it, or know it. I'm a native speaker, and also thought `vawn` was the most obvious pronounciation. I'm guessing it's because `augh` is perceived as a recognizable vowel cluster where `gh` tends to be silent (daughter, caught, naught, taught). The interesting twist for me is that `laugh` is in obvious counter example, until I realized that gh in final position (laugh, rough, enough) is almost always \f\. And further, in words like laughter, roughness, we immediately distinguish a modified root word from the lexical position.

Maybe there's also an interesting thread to pull on in that the pattern may be more pronounced for names (e.g. Hughes). Just ruminating here though, I don't have a source for any of this.

Typical in Toronto - remember there’s only one T in “Toronto”

ROFL. I ignore this sacred rule

...and the first o is silent, and the remaining o's are pronounced 'a'.

But the TV news reporters enunciate every letter in Toronto.

There's also only one T in "Atlanta". (For some people there are none.)

Definitely heard "Alana" in the South. On the West cost right now, got a buddy from West Virginia, and even after 20-30-some-odd-years in California, he still says it like that. Among other things he boomhauers.

I didn't realize "boomhauer" could be verbed.

'oronto?

There are a handful of neighborhood and street names used in Toronto (not necessarily from Toronto) that have unusual pronunciations. Here I'll give some triples of (English spelling, actual pronunciation (IPA), a naive pronunciation (IPA)):

(Yonge, [jʌŋ], [jɑndʒ]); (Strachan, [sdʒɹɑn], [ˈsdʒɹa.tʃæn]); (Tecumseth, [tə.ˈkʌm.zi], [ˈti.kəm.sɛθ]); (Markham, [ˈmɑr.kʌm], [ˈmɑrk.hæm]), (Etobicoke, [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊ], [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊk]).

That's because some are Indigenous names phoneticized for English speakers (Yonge and Markham on the other hand are entirely English names):

Etobicoke. From Adobigok [1]

Tecumseh (or Tecumseth). From tecumtha or takhamehse [2]

Mississauga. From Misi-zaagiing [3]

[1] https://www.etobicokehistorical.com/brief-history-of-etobico...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga

As a non-native English speaker I wonder if Leicester is naturally pronounced right for the natives, or has to be explicitly taught.

It has to be taught. Most english native speakers will say Lie-chester by default.

Asking people how to pronounce "Strachan Street" is an old Toronto pastime. (Strawn, by the way.)

> misstake

I see what you did there. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

A smelling pistake

In case you're wondering, Couch St. in Portland, Oregon, USA is pronounced "Cooch." It's named for 19th century ship captain and early businessman John H. Couch. It's the "C" street in the so-called Alphabet District north of Burnside, which is the "B" street. There are, or were, other landmarks named after Capt. Couch, but I'm not sure if any still exist.

Note that you only pronounce Couch that way in Portland when talking about the street. You wouldn’t maintain the pronunciation when saying eg “Sorry for spilling wine on your couch”

Same as Texans asking where Houston Street is in NYC.

But Houston Street is older than Sam Houston, and was always pronounced that way.

My Scottish mate with the surname Houston would side with the Texans, on this one.

And likewise, Austin has a bunch of names that are pronounced oddly.

Manchaca checking in

There's also St. John, which for some odd reason is pronounced as sinjin.

https://old.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/12i3n9o/why_is_sain...

That's just centuries of change without updating spelling, a la Leicester or Worcester.

Pronunciation inconsistency is due to all the invasions.

You should watch Map Men.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4

Sometimes I wonder about the aristocrats who towns and roads in the UK were named after, like Lord Penistone of South Yorkshire, or Lady Sluts Hole of Norfolk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penistone

https://www.norfolklive.co.uk/news/norfolk-news/rude-funny-s...

Is it the same reason as Worcestershire mapped to "wooster" ?

Plymouth -> plee-mooth not ply-mouth

Outsider! :-)

More like PLIM-uth. I guess there is no way to write it unambiguously in English

Not outsider - non-native speaker.

maybe "Pleemuth"?

I hope you aren't talking about the one in Massachusetts which is not pronounced either of those ways

No, im talking about this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_(software)

But the link says it is named after Plymouth Rock which is indeed the Plymouth in Massachusetts

Plymouth, England is PLIM-uth

PLI-muth?

Haha thanks, typo

Well, I wouldn't piss on the British for that, when Louisville is pronounced "LOO-vul" and not "Lou-iss-ville".

And don't get me started on Des Moines, Boise, La Jolla (at least that has an excuse), Spokane, Versailles, Tucson, Willamette, ...

And the worst of all: Arkansas.

> in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St

That explains why many years ago when I visited Portland, a homeless guy corrected my pronunciation of that while we were walking past him.

Featherstonehaugh pronounced Fanshaw is apparently something made up by P.G. Wodehouse for one of his characters. It's just Featherston-haw for everyone in reality.

The character Beauchamp ("BEE-jum") Day in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City is a softening of the English aristocratic way ("Bee-chum") of the French spelling Beauchamp ("boh-SHON" as the French would say).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76tVgne0gOA

But he's less a British aristocrat than a brittle prep-school martinet in a cheap tie who rants at a secretary over three typos like a duke defending the realm, sneers about Kelly girls and office decor as if guarding the Social Register, treats sleeping with his own employee as proof of authority, and then sneaks off to bathhouses while running his typing pool with equal parts class anxiety, closet panic, and a middle manager's superiority complex.

In New Orleans, protesters against outsiders acquiring and developing real estate hold up signs that read "Say Tchoupitoulas" (/ˌtʃɑp ə ˈtuː ləs/). I give my wife lots of hassle about the pronunciations of Louisiana place names like Tchoupitoulas, Natchitoches (/ˈnæk ə ˌdɪʃ/, really!), etc. especially when she complains about northeastern place names like "Leominster".

Nackadish!

>Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider.

This is a monstrous crime against language.

well how do you say Newfoundland? Soon it will be said "Noovlan"

People from there generally pronounce it "New-fund-LAND", people from the rest of (english) Canada tend pronounce it "NEW-fund-land".

It's still got three syllables.

I tend to go with "Newfn-lan".

Did they? The article[1] seem to be in contradiction to the claim. For centuries it was rather easy to distinguish aristocracy without lingustic conspiracies. I'm really not an expert in British surnames however I know for sure that pop history is full of invented "fun facts" which are not true but persist cause they sound cool.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featherstonhaugh

There's also the British penchant for deliberately mispronouncing French words. I have heard "renaissance" pronounced "reh-NAY-sance", "fillet" pronounced "fill-it", "valet" as "val-it" and so on. I think it's a national point of pride to pronounce the words of their neighbor incorrectly.

Yep. And try "lieutenant" or "herb" on for size. (Edit: I guess "herb" is a bit of a complex one... originally from Latin's "herba" where the H was pronounced, but from UK it came most immediately from French's "herbe" with no H sound. So UK did somehow shortcut back to a more original sound.)

As a Brit, my understanding of the American pronunciation was from Italian immigrants in the US.

Oybs

America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.

As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.

Apparently, workers on the Gemini space program pronounced it "Jeh-mih-nee" back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini#Pronunciation

the soft g is triggering, I can hear my classics tutor yelling even 20+ years later, don't get me started on the american pronunciation of hegemony!

I'm always amused by some mispronunciations that stray farther away from the original than necessary.

My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.

But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.

The plural is what gets me though crepes (just sounds weird as krehps vs krayps).

I kinda get it, but you can say step and stehps, not stayps, so why not krehps?

I say it the American way when I speak English anyway because that's just how it is. :)

I notice the variance in british and american pronunciation of especially romance + greek words, correct or otherwise and I'm willing to give credit where it's due, I'm also happy to celebrate the differences rather than mock or correct them, I just won't accept the slander!

>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.

See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...

Or Wilkes-Barre, PA

Or Montpelier, VT!

Delhi, Ca -> Del-High

Fontainebleau State Park -> Fountain Blue State Park

These were two off the ones that really stood out from my travels.

Calais, ME

Or Pueblo, Salida and Buena Vista CO

Birmingham, AL

Detroit, MI

Is the Illinois one the same pronunciation as "KAY-ro", Georgia?

Notre Dame, IN

Not just Americans! I will add the small town of L'Ardoise, NS, pronounced "Lordways".

I’ve always said that one key difference between British English and American English is that a British speaker will intentionally mispronounce a foreign word, while an American will attempt to pronounce it correctly but get it wrong anyway.

It's much deeper than that probably because the kludge of english is in large part french.

But I also completely disagree, I don't think americans are attempting to pronounce croissant correctly for example, whereas brits will be much closer with no attempt at intentional mispronunciation, it just happens that brits are much closer on some and further on others, and vice versa re americans.

and I don't think there is any malice, in fact it became common among the british aspirational middle-class in the 70s to adopt french words in an attempt to appear cultured and upper, ironically now a clear marker of non-u.

> it became common among the british aspirational middle-class in the 70s to adopt french words in an attempt to appear cultured

Mon dieu Rodney!

"Valet" and "cadet" is an interesting pair: they rhyme in French (/va.lɛ/ and /ka.dɛ/), but rhyming them in English would be ... unusual.

If there were just French words pronounced in a French way and English words which came from French and are now pronounced in an English way that would be bad enough but in fact we have a whole spectrum of bastardisation.

Interestingly in British english valet would rhyme with cadet if you were referring to a servant and not to someone who will park your car.

So this isn't the British being deliberate obtuse, foreigners pronounce English words wrong all the time and we don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. They do it because that's how they would pronounce those words in their language.

Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.

It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.

Those are the standard British pronunciations, if you meant 'I have heard' as though it might be a niche or occasional occurrence. ('fill-ay' et al. are AmE pronunciations.)

It's not always that way though, consider 'niche': it's AmE that decided it's 'nitch'!

It's a national past time for us Brits to annoy the French. Kind of how two cousins who don't like each other would behave at a family gathering

Surely the American way of saying "REN-uh-saunce" is further from the French than the British pronunciation?

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