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How to pronounce British towns & cities: -HAM, -BURY, -WICH, -MOUTH…

A surprising thing about British town names is they are often pronounced differently than they are written. For example, the name “Tottenham” is actually pronounced phonetically like “tot-nam”, which is only two syllables compared to the three syllables in its written form. Depending on where you are in Britain, you may even hear different variations in pronunciation. So how can you know how to pronounce town names properly? In this lesson, I will teach you about common suffixes of British town and city names and how to pronounce them correctly every time. I will teach you the etymology of suffixes such as -ham, -bury, -field, -wich, -mouth, -pool, and -ing. We will also talk about what these suffixes mean. For example, did you know that any town name that ends in -pool means “harbour”? Learning these suffixes will improve your pronunciation and knowledge of British town names.

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3 COMMENTS

Thank you my dear master for this interesting lesson. You are great and i honor of having such an english professor like you. ❤️

Faramarz. F. T

Great lesson, Jade, although I acknowledge it was really hard to me… Fortunately, most of the famous English cities have easier names, like London, for example. Haha! Anyway, it’s always a good idea to know the right way to pronouce in case one day I ought to go there.

This lesson proves that English is not a phonetic language at all. Do you know the reason why the English spelling is so different from speaking?

I am from Brazil and my mother tongue is Portuguese, which is not 100% phonetic, of course, but our pronunciation is more “predictable”, I think.

Thank you in advance!