Audiobooks have begun to outsell print

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Well, nowadays all the online dictionaries offer audio pronunciations, so it'll become less and less common, I guess.

For our case: /æ/ would be the vowel in "cat" and "mat", /ᴧ/ the one in "cup". (Though to non-native ears like mine, the difference between the two gets harder to spot the further north you get. Hence my confusion about Alnwick.)

Some people do say "ah-nik" ("ah" as in "cart") rather than "a-nik", but I think "a-nik" is more common. The important point is that the "l" and the "w" are silent.

There are lots of place names ending in "-wick", which in Anglo Saxon meant "a place where goods are traded", and the "w" is almost always silent, so "Warwick" is pronounced "Worrik", "Chiswick" is pronounced "Chizik", and so on. It's the same word as "vik" in "viking", as a matter of interest: vikings were (originally at least) people who traded.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Some people do say "ah-nik" ("ah" as in "cart") rather than "a-nik", but I think "a-nik" is more common. The important point is that the "l" and the "w" are silent.

There are lots of place names ending in "-wick", which in Anglo Saxon meant "a place where goods are traded", and the "w" is almost always silent, so "Warwick" is pronounced "Worrik", "Chiswick" is pronounced "Chizik", and so on. It's the same word as "vik" in "viking", as a matter of interest: vikings were (originally at least) people who traded.

Do you happen to know if the -wich in Norwich and Ipswich has the same root?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Do you happen to know if the -wich in Norwich and Ipswich has the same root?

Yes - same origin. "Ipswich" is interesting in that it's one of the very few such names in which the "w" is pronounced ("Norwich" is pronounced "Norrich").

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One American pronunciation that sounds very strange to British ears is the fact that you regard the "h" in the word "herb" as silent, and say "erb". In British English, the "h" is always voiced.

Only if it's a plant, not a person we are talking about.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One American pronunciation that sounds very strange to British ears is the fact that you regard the "h" in the word "herb" as silent, and say "erb". In British English, the "h" is always voiced.

In my head I'm now trying to say "I've got a herb garden" in a Somerset accent and I'm pretty sure the H is silent there as well so I'd reckon it's regional as to if the H is pronounced or not (Can't get it to work in brummie either)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

In my head I'm now trying to say "I've got a herb garden" in a Somerset accent and I'm pretty sure the H is silent there as well so I'd reckon it's regional as to if the H is pronounced or not (Can't get it to work in brummie either)

Certainly there are many regional accents in which people drop their h's, but this isn't a case of dropping h's in general: it's this one specific word. There are of course many English words in which the "h" is silent (eg "honest"), but it's interesting that this specific one should have a silent "h" in American English but not British English. As you suggest, it perhaps did start out as a dialectal variation which, for some reason or another, spread to become the standard pronunciation.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes - same origin. "Ipswich" is interesting in that it's one of the very few such names in which the "w" is pronounced ("Norwich" is pronounced "Norrich").

In Georgia we have a Taliaferro County, pronounced "Tolliver." I've always assumed it was a British pronunciation. Am I right?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BenG

In Georgia we have a Taliaferro County, pronounced "Tolliver." I've always assumed it was a British pronunciation. Am I right?

It would appear so. Wikipedia says:

Taliaferro (/ˈtɒlɪvər/ TOL-i-vər), also spelled Tagliaferro, Talifero, Tellifero, Taliferro, Tolliver, or Toliver,[1] is a prominent family in eastern Virginia and Maryland. The Taliaferros (originally Tagliaferro, Italian pronunciation: [ˌtaʎʎaˈfɛrro], which means "ironcutter" in Italian) are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.[2]

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

I'd hazard a guess that it's named after the same family. It's not a common name - I've certainly not encountered it before.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It would appear so. Wikipedia says:



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

I'd hazard a guess that it's named after the same family. It's not a common name - I've certainly not encountered it before.

We also pronounce LaFayette Ga as La-Fay-ette rather than use the traditional french pronunciation for the man it was named after.

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Don't forget knack a doe ches and knack a tish one in east Texas and one in Louisiana. They are spelled Nacogdoches and Natchitoches. Oh and Waxahachie. (Walks a hatch ee.)
Note, I had to Google for the spelling.

I went to the university in Nacogdoches (Stephen F Austin State University) and on my freshman orientation the speaker asked the auditorium if anyone knew where Natchitoches was. One lone student raised his hand. The speaker said: there's your class drunk, that's the closet place to get alcohol from here.

Our county, and other were DRY counties.