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So... an American couple visit Wales and just have to visit the town with the longest name in the UK. After standing in front of the name sign and arguing about how to pronounce this place, they decide it is time to grab some lunch. As they sit looking through the menu, the waitress comes over to ask if they are ready to order. Hearing that she has a Welsh accent , one of them asks if she is local.”Oh yes” she says, “I was born about five miles away”. “Well, in that case, will you please tell us, very clearly and very slowly, where we are?”. The waitress leans forward and says, very deliberately “Burrr-gerrrr Kiiiinnng” 🤨

Worth pointing out that latin is a relatively clean and standardised language because there are no longer native speakers to drive changes to the language.

The rule for the English language is all the rules have exceptions, it's just a matter of how many exceptions.

As an Englishman who has lived in Wales, I have to say that Welsh place names are only difficult to pronounce if you approach them as English. Welsh is a different language. In fact, Welsh is quite phonetic. Learn the pronunciation of Welsh letters and the way you say the names is largely pretty straightforward.

best pronounciation story I ever heard was in Devon there is a village called Crapstone. In the local pub some very posh Londoner asked a local if they really said Crapstone, the local replied, ...."No zurr round 'ere we calls it Shitabrick!"

There is one fun place in Britain called Torpenhow Hill up north. Tor, Pen and How are all words for "hill" in various dialects, meaning it translates to Hill hill hill hill. So, it's definitely a hill.

The village of 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch' on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. Translated from Welsh into English means. 'St Mary’s Church In The Hollow Of The White Hazel Near To The Rapid Whirlpool And The Church Of St Tysilio Of The Red Cave'. The name was created in 1869 as a publicity stunt to give the village's newly created railway station the accolade of being the railway station with the longest name in Britain. Day to day everybody shortens it to 'Llanfairpwl' pronounced 'Clan - vair - pul'. Meaning 'St Mary's Church by the pool'.

I'm surprised they didn't mention Loughborough which has 'ough' pronounced two completely different ways in the same word (it's luffburrah).

As a Scot with a little understanding of Gaelic (that is to say 'Tha beagan Gàilhig agam') Some of our place names our fascinatingly difficult. It's worth noting that whilst Gaelic has had a major influence on our place names, so has Pictish, Norse, Scots and English. For me, the most frustrating was that just within the southwest of the city of Aberdeen are two places called 'Cults' and 'Peterculter' But pronounced 'Cults' (as in the plural of a cult) and 'Peter-cooter'. Other places in Scotland that sound nothing like they're spelled include: Avoch (Och) Cuthill (Kettle) Footdee (Fittie) Turriff (Turra) Forres (Foh-rez) Kirkcaldy (Kir-cod-ee) Hawick (Hoy-ck) Ballachulich (Ba-la-hoo-lish) Dumfries (Dum-frees) Kirkcudbright (Kerr-coo-bree) And possibly most famously and ridiculously Milngavie (Mill-guy)

I like the level of detail here. Seeing a person genuinely trying to learn new stuff is great!

More Jay Foreman. His stuff is brilliant. Also, please don't apologise for getting things wrong, you're trying to learn that's the main thing!

Nobody seems to have mentioned Cholmondeley - pronounced Chumley, I suspect to deliberately confuse.

Sarah I absolutely admire your desire to learn more about us weird Brits. You present some videos that are amazing and even educate us about ourselves.

That crazy 58 letter Welsh town name translates as: Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio of the red cave.

Please please please react to horrible histories. You’ll have a great laugh and be learning at the same time

It's great to see an intelligent channel , and a lovely lady who is scholarly and genuinely wants to learn . Hope you and hubby get the chance to visit us one day , I'm sure you will both love it .🇬🇧

Welcome to Cornwall. Kernow a gas dynargh. That's one of our Celtic languages and lands. Hope my welsh and scottish friends here tell you about Alba and Cymru also. Meur ras. Dedh da.

"Woo-stuh-shur" So many of us Brits get this one wrong too. And I'd absolutely say to check out more of our History, it's a long one of being constantly invaded and conquered. There's a reason we eventually got rather good at war, we'd simply experienced a lot of it. (Means we have really awesome castles as well as mythology built upon so many of those invading cultures)

It's crazy to think how much your channel has grown since these videos from a couple of years ago. I hope it continues to grow in popularity

The town of Towcester needs to have a picture of a toaster on its signs so people can have an easier time pronouncing it xD

Also even as a Scot I got caught making one of the most common mistakes in Scottish place names. Milngavie just outside Glasgow is pronounced “Mullguy”.

Thanks very much for the shout out :) Worcestershire is spot on. The 2 CGP Grey videos on the City of London are superb

i before e except after c has more exceptions than examples

Favourite quote from a exhibition at the Tate Art Gallery. ' History is a record of migration'

I grew up in West Yorkshire in a town called Keighley (shows in Jay's video), pronounced Keith-Ly, with a "TH" sound even though there's no T. Oh and by the was London, and the city of London are two different things, the city of London is just under 3 km2 compared to the whole of London which is 1,569 km2

And not one mention of Fingeringhoe.... And, yes. Clearly in Essex.

The one thing you can't conseptulize is that people from all over the country pronounce our names with different accents it shows you it just takes you down another rabbit hole

As a Devon girl, I had an entire childhood of petty enjoyment from knowing the crazy pronunciation of a lot of Devonshire places baffled the visitors - names like: Teignmouth (Tin-muth,) Loddiswell (Lodz-wul,) Torquay (Tor-kee) and Mousehole (Mowzul.) I knew the secret behind pronouncing Devon places; us Janners love our vowels, but only if there's not too many of them, and especially without chucking a load of consonants in between them as well... the key is to pick one or - at most! - two favourite vowels, and skip over as many consonants as possible to get to that. And then I moved to Kent. They seem to do things differently; they like to take their time over pronouncing their placenames. And I was the one who started getting laughed at, for trying to apply my Devonian Rules of pronunciation. So now I know that Wrotham is 'Rootum' and not 'Rothum,' Teston is 'Tee-ston' and not 'Testun,' and Leybourne is 'Lay-born' and not 'Lebburn.'

Great reactions, I love 'em. There is a really good poem for pronunciation the first two lines of which are "I take it you already know, Of tough and bough and cough and dough". You can find it online by just typing the first line into your serch engine.

There were two "invasions" of Celtic language speakers to the island of Great Britain. "Invasion" tends to imply military conquest whereas these were more osmotic being through migration and trade. The first "invasion" occurred in the 7th century BC and brought the Brythonic language with them. This spread throughout the island but is today restricted to Wales (Welsh), Cornwall (Cornish) and Brittany (Breton). Cumbric and Pictish both died out in the 12th century AD. The second "invasion" occurred in the 6th century AD from Ireland and brought the Goidelic language to Great Britain. Today this language subsists in Ireland (Irish or Erse), the Isle of Man (Manx) and Scotland (Gaelic) where it replaced the Brythonic Pictish.

On British history regarding incoming groups and languages 1)Britons. Speakers of Celtic languages. Assumedly, the original inhabitants of the British Isles. A) Some evidence suggests trade networks between pre-Roman Britons, and European powers, As such their may be European influence of names in this Celtic languages 2) Romans. Speakers of Latin. Earliest known conquering invaders. A) As well as Latin, many Romans were fluent in Greek, which may also be an influence. B) Strong evidence of a complex trade network, European influence likely. 3) Anglo-Saxons. A number of Germanic groups, including the Angles, and the Saxons, who spoke Germanic languages. Invaded Britain after the Romans abandoned it. A) As these people have previously been conquered by Romans, they would have come with some Latin influences B) Geographic proximity, in their original lands, also meant some Norse influences 4) Vikings. Speakers of Norse. Originally raiders, later established their own communities, and territories in the British Isles. A) Vikings took slaves from all over, it is highly likely that other European languages would have been influential here. 5) Normans. Speakers of French(ish). Invaders coming over in 1066 to seize the throne of England. They succeeded and French spread from the top down. A) 'Norman' derives from 'Norse-Man', these people descended from Vikings who settled in the Normandy region of France. As such, they would likely have equal Norse, and French influence on names. B) French is a romance language, it is heavily based on Latin, as such there would also be Latin influences here.

Frome is Ffrwm in Welsh. The 'w' is an 'oo' sound. Two F's are an F sound and one is a 'v' sound. Hence 'Froom'. The English wrote it in weird.

SoGal you should watch a Fred Dibnah video. It's British industrial history with a national treasure

KZfaq suggested this video to me, and I found it interesting, I am from Brighton on the South Coast of England - pronounced "Bright-un" - and the town was previously known as Brighthelmstone, Brighton starting off as an informal slang name...

the celts arrived in blighty between 3500bc and 500bc. academics argue over the fine details. somebody lived here before that, but very little remains of their culture. its claimed the peoples around glastonbury, in the marshes have existed there for 5k years, but its tricky to confirm this, as they didnt tend to build stone structures.

Aye we do have sheriffs in the UK.. in Scotland a sheriff is a Judge or a sheriff’s officer is the equivalent of a debt collector, great vid though quite funny 👌🏻

Worcestershire sauce is pronounced (at least in my accent): Wuss - ter - sher That's it. A lot easier than the way I always hear Americans always say it (workusssesssesssster-shire) 😂😂

It's times like this that I'm grateful that I managed to learn English through TV and the internet later on when I was younger.

For the place named Mousehole, their lifeboat crew were part of a disaster to hit the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (the charity that saves lives at sea) in 1981. The Penlee Lifeboat was based near there upto 19th December 1981 when they answered a mayday from a cargo ship named Union Star, there were no survivors from either. There was a documentary made for the 25th anniversary of the disaster called Cruel Sea: The Penlee Disaster. Its here on KZfaq if you want to learn more, the RNLI btw is the worlds first sea rescue service. I'm from Sheffield, South Yorkshire and I thought that the story about Mousehole would interest you a little.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but I recommend historia civilis' series on Rome. It's fun, accessible and a good way to start learning about the end of the Republic. He has a playlist chronological in order in his channel. I recommend starting with the video on Cicero's year and going down the years, but there are other videos that explain the context, names and gouvernement positions.

I want to know why is Kansas pronounced Kan-sas but Arkansas Ar-ken-saw?

You're starting to grow on me i like your voice it's kind of soothing

One of the best ones I know which 99% of people pronounce wrong (even those who live nearby) is a small village in West Yorkshire called Slaithwaite - it has two acceptable ways of saying it, either, 'sla-wit' or 'slath-wait' (depending on how broad yorkshire you want to sound) instead of the obvious way, 'slayth-wait'.

If you're interested in learning more about the changes over time in the English language, I highly recommend the channel Nativlang, particularly their video about what English would have sounded like in Shakespeare's time. He does plenty of other videos on all sorts of languages from around the world too, so if you're interested in covering different languages on this channel then it's a great place to start! Really enjoying your videos so far! ^-^

Love your videos - literate, informative, and self-effacing (the last not a generally recognised American trait!). But fascinating though British place-names are in their power to confuse tourists, what are even more intriguing are the straightforwardly beautiful names. So I'd like to get you started on my two favourite English village names: Haselbury Plucknett; and the absolutely gorgeous village called Ryme Intrinseca. (The first is in Somerset, the second in Dorset - the latter county a treasurehouse of charming names. The origin of my own surname is also from Dorset, and is sort of nice...but that's another story.) Keep them coming. You make the lockdown bearable.

Quite a few villages near me, two that come to mind. Cowbit pronounced Cubbit and Aslackby pronounced aze-el-bee

find your programs very interesting, Learning alot about my own country.

I'm disappointed that my home town, Loughborough, was shown a couple of times but not discussed.

This gives you a clue as to how the UK evolved over time, and who we were invaded by etc lol

Your learning of British history and history in general is really stimulating. I wish more people took an interest like you do. I find it fascinating too. I am a bit of a mongrel when it comes to being British, as I have Scottish, English and Channel Islands all in the mix and who knows what else, as my DNA test shows Norwegian and Maltese! I blame the Vikings for that though.

This is the first of your videos I've ever seen (sorry about that) and I gave to say I absolutely loved it... subscribed!

Map men are epically fantastic. There’s only one rule for the English language, there are no rules!

We do have sheriff's here in UK but they have powers like bailiffs.

Remember it this way, the shire of Worcester, but just happen to forget to say the r,c and e. Also our phonetic rules come from multiple places, so we don't have hard and fast rules. which is why English is one of the hardest to learn, but is also the most flexible

I love the dotty map showing the language influences. It's brilliant.

Great vid. If you want to learn more about the UK and its history, with the same kind of sense of humour, you should watch the BBC series 'Horrible Histories'.

Hi, I'm from Cambridgeshire in eastern England.

Just to show variety, here are some examples and their pronunciation. Bough = Bow, cow, Cough = coff, Dough = Doh, Enough = enuff, Hough = huff or how, Lough = lock, Rough = ruff, Sough = sow, cow, now, Tough = tuff, Borough = burra, furlough = fur-low. After this it starts to get complicated. lol

Yup you pronounced Herefordshire right when you read the poster's explanation of pronunciation. Love that you want to know.

Not difficult to pronounce where I'm from. Officially its Kingston-upon-Hull but it is almost always shortened to simply, 'ull, just across the river from Grimsby actually. There is a street here called Whitefriargate which is pronounced White-fruh-gate and off that street is a smaller one which is genuinely called, The Land of Green Ginger! Imagine that, you could actually live in a place called The Land of Green Ginger! 😊

I am living in Chester and I did my Archaeology degree here. One of the digs I was involved with at Caerwys in North Wales helped prove the Romans got a lot further across towards Anglesey than originally believed. A circular buttress of the style from the time of the legion based in Chester is pretty distinctive. It explains why there was a permanent fortress here with one of the few amphitheatres in Britain. There is a large, elliptical building that is unique to the entire Roman Empire that was absolutely massive and the height of luxury for the time. Knowing the fact that they were nearer to their goal than believed it has been suggested as a government structure designed to strike fear into anyone withstanding them.

Born and now living back in Frome after a life in the military listening to my friends from around the country mis pronounce my place of birth is just normal for me now. Add my French/Swiss surname to the mix which everyone seems to struggle with and you have a life of not really being bothered by mis pronunciation at all. It just is.

There are a poem called „The Chaos“, which is about the pronounsiation „rules“ of the English language. You can find it on KZfaq too.

Love this episode, but please stop the music! My brain was fighting itself as to whether to follow the music or the speech.

The village of Cogenhoe in Northamptonshire. Pronounced Cook-no. Go figure

Hi SoGal. I love the fact that you are looking at the shared language and heritage of the US and UK. I am also a fan of history (particularly military history) and note that you are looking to expand your voyage of discovery overseas. Can I suggest you look at the Battle of Imjin River in the Korean War to see how the difference in our uses if the English language can lead to a military disaster. Keep it up - really enjoy watching and learning with you.

You cetainly don't appear to be like a typical American on KZfaq , you are obviousely educated and inquisitive . I like that so have subscribed .

Always remember Scotland is different.... For one we say 'shy- ir'

Worcester is pronounced like Wooster ... Like rooster. So worcestershire is like Wooster shire.

I love your channel keep up the great stuff

Another good video SoGal! 😀

Here in Devon we have Westward Ho!, the only town in the country with an ‘!’ in it..!

The only reason that you can't mispronounce words in Latin, is that we have no idea how it was ever pronounced.

There's definitely an Essex Junction in Vermont. I've been there, it's a nice place

Try this one from my native Lincolnshire ... the village of Aslackby. A pound to a penny you get it wrong. A hint: It begins ‘ay’, the ‘s’ is pronounced ‘z’, the ‘l’ is heard and the ‘ack’ is (of course) silent. The ‘by’ as you now know is Danish denoting a Viking place name (as is my home village of Ulceby). Also in Lincolnshire, is Spital in the Street. Street reveals it’s position on a Roman road - in this case Ermine Street, which ran from Londinium (London) through Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) to Eboracum (York). The ‘spital’ is derived from the fact there was a hospital there - probably serving travellers using the Roman road.

Wales is definitely another level, but it's pretty much cause the Welsh alphabet is different from English, once you have a basic understanding of the phonetics it's actually easier to guess Welsh placenames by just reading them out phonetically than it is reading English placenames that have a bunch of special exemptions to common rules and local dialect changes.

always enjoy your videos, thank you.

The variation of pronunciation of the 'ough' throughout the English language, appears to be demonstrated in place names, but in many cases, the different pronunciations for towns, etc. is down to the way the locals originally pronounced them. 'Brough' in East Yorkshire, was called Petuaria by the Roman settlers, (but was originally settled by the Celtic, Parisi tribe: what they called it is uncertain, but since 'petuar' is Brythonic for 'four' or 'quarter', it's likely that the Romans adopted this for their own naming purposes.) its current name, and that of other similarly named places, comes from the Old English word 'burh' (meaning 'fortification' - the same root that [English] 'borough' and [German] 'burgh' comes from,) but over time, the locals 'chose' to refer to it as 'bruff'. There are a number of other places named Brough or variations thereof in Northern England, and in most cases they are pronounced 'bruff', though two notable exceptions are places such as 'Middlesbrough' (only 64 miles from Brough,) & 'Conisbrough' (less than 35 miles from Brough,) where the -brough part of the name is pronounced 'bruh'; also 'Brougham' in Cumbria (less than 20 miles from Brough ['bruff'] in Cumbria,) which is pronounced simply as 'Broom'.

Love the content you post, you delve deeper than most to find the real meanings of well everything you look into, you also genuinely try with the pronunciation of place names, you do beat yourself up far too much for the smallest error, if you were ever to visit the UK by all means visit London but don't make it your main destination, further north is less expensive by a long way, the old buildings are much older generally and many are free or much cheaper to visit, York is a good city to visit, it was the capitol of England long before London ever was and is a genuine Roman city so much older than London too, the city walls are still intact and you can walk along the top of them either for free or at little cost, even the old buildings and roads are still in public use as shops etc with roads that are 3-4ft wide so no traffic. Keep up with the great content and thank you for the time and effort that you put in to making it :) Oh almost forgot, say Hi to Roger for me :)

when I bought my house I had to sign a thing to the Sheriff of Wavertree to say I wouldn't cut the trees down. I'm not sure who actually is the Sheriff of Wavertree, except I understand that this area in Liverpool once was a Royal Park so I assume the Sheriff was in charge stopping people poaching the King's/Queen's animals whatever they may be.

As a brit, my favorite locally hard to pronounce name is Cogenhoe, which is pronounced cook-no.

And to make matters even more complicated, there were two major Celtic languages - which are quite unconnected. So Ireland and Scotland contains one batch of place names based on their Celtic language and Wales and Cornwall place names are based on their, different, Celtic language. And yes, the Celts did invade the British Isles - but we don't know much about the people who lived on these islands before the Celts arrived - apart from their surviving grand monuments, like Stonehenge and Newgrange.

Map Men are magic. Lots of interesting stuff to unpack with them! Watch more. English is not a "real" language. It was a spoken language, spoken and pronounced differently in every corner of the country. French was the "official" language since the Norman conquest. When it was finally codified and rules applied.... they just picked the bits they liked and the "rules" tend to have more exceptions that break the rules than follow them. Makes it a very simple language to "get by in" and almost impossible to understand in its entirety. Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue is the best book I have ever come across on the subject. Funny too. Loughborough LOO GA BAROO GAH instead of LUFF BRAH was always my fav.

a lot of people believe the Celts are from mainly Scotland Ireland Wales and part of Cornwall! The Celts are not a race as such but a number of individual tribes that spoke a similar language and were spread across most of Northern Europe and Spain!

Just to mention a little fun fact about Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood, there is a tree there that is meant to have some legend with with Robin Hood. It is called the Major Oak and is about 1000 years old and if I remember correctly it is meant to be the one Robin and His Merry Men slept near (it is a lot of years since I read about the legend lol). According to Wikipedia it weighs an estimated 23 tons, has a 33 feet (10 metres) girth and a 92 feet (28 metres) canopy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Oak en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Oak#/media/File:Major_Oak_in_Sherwood_Forest_in_2006.jpg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Oak#/media/File:Major_Oak.JPG

I don't know how it was done in Cornwall and much of England, but for Scotland posh English educated guys from the Ordnance Survey (or its predecessors Govt departments) went to the nearest local resident they came across and wrote down a English version of the Gaelic (Celtic) place names using English letters. They often mis-associated the location that the name it belonged to with the actual places they had mapped and usually failed to get the spelling anywhere near right (I guess some map makers were better than others ! If you go to Scotland today you'll often get the "correct" Gaelic spelling alongside the old English version on place name signs, which often helps get the name to sound right in English. The same was done in Ireland as well. Wales is slightly different as they used a different form of Celtic than Scotland and Ireland. English place names in the west will often be Celtic derived with an later anglo-saxon added, whereas in the east they more likely to be a mix of Viking, earlier Anglo-Saxon (old english) and Celtic side by side depending on who owned or lived in specific places when the names stuck. On top of that there are also the Roman place names that were long remembered and used after the Empire had gone in the 500 and 600 ADs when the anglo-saxons started to take over English governance. History in action. I think modern DNA studies have also indicated that the different Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons Jutes and the rest) have left their distinctive DNA signature in the regions they originally "occupied" in the 500+ ADs, so its not surprising to me that local place names lasted for a very long time even as the form of English spoken evolved considerably.

4:40 both pronunciations are correct. It depends on ones accent.

We do have High Sheriff's here in various counties of the UK, but it's a ceremonial role. Rather than spend ages typing it all out, here's a link to the role they play: highsheriffs.com/about/what-is-a-high-sheriff/

you might find Simon Roper's you tube channel helpful. He highlights the changes in English over the centuries to show why we have these odd pronunciations now. He also speaks these old forms of english and proto germanic in his videos so you can hear the changes over time, might help with context.

Glad you enjoy this fun video, I love your smile. I learned how to say LlanfairPG via youtube videos where locals teach it via a song.

Riding is not Old English but Old Norse, the word was Thrydding meaning a third part in Old Norse. It was adopted as a word when Yorkshire was part of the Danish (who spoke ON) dominated area before the final unification of England

I recommended this in your pronouncing English county’s video 🙆‍♂️🙆‍♂️🙆‍♂️

In North Kent there is the remains of the ancient forest and the North Downs Way (pilgrimage route) called ‘Trosley country park’ spelt Trottiscliffe. I live just a few miles away and did not learn this until I visited it. Keeps life interesting.

California has a city named Manteca. It sounds very nice, if you don't speak Spanish, but if you do, you are already google it, unable to believe anyone would call a town "Lard".

There is a TV show called "Horrible Histories" and is a great way to learn British History.

before we went to Mousehole my dad was told it was called Muzzle by the people who lived there , when we got there the first person he asked said it was called Mouse -hole ....

During the period of approximately 1400 to 1700, the English language went through a series of changes known as the Great Vowel Shift. During this time, the vowel sounds of Middle English changed to the vowel sounds of Modern English - the exact changes are pretty complex but as a general rule we can say that the sounds raised in tongue height - so the tongue is higher in the mouth in the vowel sounds of Modern English than in the sound indicating the same letter in Middle English. For example the word 'boat' used to be pronounced more like 'bought' and 'mate' used to be pronounced more like 'mart'. This also explains some homophones - before the Great Vowel Shift, 'meet' and 'meat' were pronounced differently. (There are all sorts of hypothesised causes of the Great Vowel Shift but most of them focus on increased migration between different parts of England resulting in spreading of accents, and the people of England's extremely complicated relationship with all things French.) As writing became more common and accessible during and after this period, some spellings were updated in a well-meaning but disconnected attempt to have certain letters or letter-combinations represent certain sounds. But pronunciation is much more open to evolution than spelling is. So where you have words that were regularly written down before the Great Vowel Shift, you tend to see spellings that suggest different vowel sounds to those that are most commonly indicated by those letters. Place names are particularly affected because they're some of the words that were most commonly written down pre-1400, when some of the most common written materials included maps, accounts of important events, and legal documents, all of which you might expect to include place names. Let's take the first syllable of Worcester as an example. Your instinct is to pronounce it something like the word 'wore', but the correct pronunciation is more like 'wuh'. If you make both of those sounds and focus on what your mouth is doing (you might need to flip between them a few times as it feels weird to think about your mouth while you talk) you'll find that your tongue moves from lower in the mouth with the pronunciation that seems to fit the spelling, to higher in the mouth with the currently-used pronunciation. You can see it when comparing the expected pronunciation of Frome (rhyming with tome) and it's actual pronunciation (rhyming with tomb) as well - the tongue raises in it's relative position in the mouth for the correct vowel sound. When you do that experiment, you're essentially re-enacting in a few seconds a change that occurred unintentionally and piecemeal across the whole country over 3 centuries. So where it's vowels that cause you trouble in English place name pronunciation, you can blame the Great Vowel Shift.

I can't stop watching your video's. Not only do I find them interesting to watch, but you are just breathtakingly beautiful. Care to hop on a plane to have a meal with a guy from Yorkshire? :) Keep up the fab vids.

Britain used to be a loose collection of Celtic tribes ( Boumani, Ordovici, Cornovi, Iceni and Pictish to name a few - there were loads! ) germanic saxon and viking feudalism also created separate kingdoms, each with local dialect and language variants , King Alfred (The Great)sought to combine them into one kingdom around 860 AD he allowed them to carry on as normal under one banner which is why our language still reflects local pronunciation rules.