When Pronunciation Matters

I had a meeting in London earlier in the week and as usual found myself surrounded by American accents (are there really that many Americans in London??) and overheard what to me is worse than nails on a chalkboard - "how do we get to lie-shester square?

Oh no they di'int!

Ok so I know you can't really blame them.. How are they to know? But for any new or aspiring expats out there, I thought I'd save you potential future embarrassment with a little pronunciation guide.*

The tourist Mecca that is Leicester Square is pronounced less-ter square.  Same for the county in the north called Leicestershire - it's pronounced Less-ter-sher (do note that the -shire suffix is not pronounced shy-er.) 

Other counties that can sometimes cause confusion are Derbyshire and Berkshire.  In both instances, the second consonant is pronounced as an A rather than an E.  Derbyshire = darby-sher (or actually more like darbeh-sher really) and Berkshire = bark-sher.

Others bound to trip people up:
Southwark = suth-eck
Ruislip = rye-slip
Gloucestershire = glosster-sher

In addition to the -shire suffix, there are a few others which will come up frequently.  If you master these, you will greatly reduce the risk of making an ass out of yourself:
-ham = -em
-mouth = -meth
-wick = -ick
-borough = -bra (kind of)

Still confused?  Lookie here - there's even a website that has sound files of people pronouncing words.

I should mention I had a bit of an argument about pronunciation once - another expat told me she would continue to say these words (including town/city/county names) however she wanted because she claimed it was her accent rather than a blatant mispronunciation, but I disagree strongly.  I'm not saying that you should start saying al-loo-min-ee-um or to-mah-to, but in my opinion, Derbyshire, Berkshire, Southwark, etc are proper names of places in England and therefor should be said the proper way as determined by the people of England, not the way a "foreigner" thinks they should be said.  (Attn: people who say Bear-ick Obama, pay attention to this rule!)

Happy Pronouncing!  (oh and if you are moving to or new to Wales, may the force be with you)

*important to mention these pronunciations may vary slightly depending on the region to which you move. I live in the Home Counties, so keep that in mind.

Mistakes Expats Make: Trying Too Hard

This is a major, major bug bear of mine.  You know those things that just make you want to slap someone across the face and not feel guilty about doing it?  That's what this is for me, so I should warn you in advance that some potentially offensive ranting may follow...

I nose around on a few expat discussion forums and I always cringe when I see topics anywhere along the lines of "I feel so British", or "What did I just say?", or the worst one "So and so said I have an accent".  Innocent enough topics, but if you dare to open any of the many responses you will see immediately that people are trying SO pathetically hard to be "British" (or Scottish, or Irish or Welsh or English, or whatever they think they want to be) and it makes me want to scream.  

There are four types of people who continually pop up in discussions like these:

1.  The ones who admit they are doing it on purpose and intentionally fake an accent to "fit in".  Seriously, I cant even comment further on these ones...

2. The ones who act like they are embarrassed about something they've just said (I just said "thanks love" or "I just asked to borrow a fiver" and am so embarrassed ). If you are so embarrassed then why come on here and announce it to the world?  If it came out naturally, then why even mention it?   Side note: If you must forcibly add new words and phrases to your vocabulary, god forbid, get it right.  We don't want any more of these types of occurrences.

3. The ones who "admit" they love some esoteric British thing that other expats don't like.  Its like watching a competition in which they think they are being scored expat points for being naturally British or something.  For example:  I think it is safe to say that most Americans think the idea of black pudding is revolting, but there are always those trying-really-hard-expats who have to pull the "oh I like black pudding, I must be naturally British".  Yeah, ok... 
Or in discussions about TV shows - there are many Americans (me included) who don't get British humour but there is always without fail the expats who insist that they think its absolutely hilarious, claim they get all the jokes and "must have a very British sense of humour".  I'd like to ask one of them to watch a (dreadful!) Carry On film with me and explain the jokes before those expat points are awarded.

4. The ones who claim after living somewhere for only about a year that they now have a Geordie accent?  Oh please. (and why would you want one in the first place??)  Remember how everyone made fun of Madonna for picking up some seemingly forced accent?  Just some food for thought... 

Soap Box Alert:  Personally, I don't want to sound/act/be British.  I'm not British.  Even when I have a British passport and am a British citizen I will never consider myself British. I am a person who lives in Great Britain, but not a British person.  There is a profound difference between those two things in my mind.

My unsolicited advice:   If you pick up new words and phrases and they come out naturally (because this will happen to everyone), then use them, but don't force the assimilation process.  Don't be embarrassed that you prefer McDonald's to traditional fish and chips.  Don't stop drinking Coors Light because you think its more "British" to drink John Smith's.  Don't agree with people who say the original Office is the best comedy ever on TV even though you know Family Guy is much MUCH funnier.  Be who you truly are... not what you think the British version of yourself should be.

Mythbusting: British People Just Sound Smart

Do a quick google of  "British people sound smart" and you will see this myth plastered all over the ill-informed Internet.  One website that claims to teach you how to "make yourself sound smart in a few easy steps" (??)  says,"everyone knows British accents sound smarter" and goes on to tell it's readers to fake the accent.   Please don't. I beg you.
 
Allow me to put this myth to rest once and for all.

I don't remember being taught proper subject-verb agreement as a child. I always assumed it was the easiest grammatical rule that everyone just knew and never had to second guess. Even if you don't know what I mean when I say "subject-verb agreement", I guarantee that you practice it correctly each and every day (unless you are one of those who has lead me to write this post).   Basically, verbs (you know, the action words) must agree with the subject in the sentence.  I was, you were, they were, she was, it was, etc etc. Duh, right?  Apparently not.

At first I though it was only Jeremy Kyle's guests who repeatedly said "I were..." and I blamed it on poor education. I assumed it was comparable to people who say "he don't know" or " I ain't got" - something that is never viewed as correct, and is only said by the uneducated, never by a professional person. Then I kept hearing it. I heard policemen and paramedics say it on real crime TV shows, I heard characters who were supposed to be portrayed as intelligent on scripted TV shows say it and I had to get to the bottom of it. Why were seemingly well educated people saying "I were..." instead of the obviously correct "I was..."?

I found this website that informed me that in parts of Northern England and the Midlands, it was considered a dialect rather than an error.  Are you kidding me?   "She were wearing a mask"?!?   Apparently, this is what politically correct linguists call non-standard grammar, but its what I call grammatically incorrect and what makes certain British people sound anything but smart.

"But, Ms LadyLiberty", you may say "I wasn't talking about THOSE British people - I was talking about the typical British accent!"   Oh right.. you mean like how the Queen talks? 

This brings me to another myth - people in England speak like the Queen.
Here's the low down on the Queen's accent - Liz, as I call her, speaks in Received Pronunciation (RP) and is one of only 2% of the population of the UK (vast majority in England rather than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) who speak this way.  Unlike most accents, RP is not regional, but very much social - it tells more about a persons socioeconomic level than where they were raised or currently live.   Honestly, you would be hard pressed to come across a person other than Liz or someone on television who speaks with an RP accent.  It is far from the "typical British accent" and I predict it will be phased out in the near-ish future.