- Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy.
Today, I have another pronunciation video for you.
I'm going to be going through all of the English place names
that are really hard to pronounce,
and I'm going to be letting you in on some secrets.
Yes, I'm going to be giving you some rules,
and if you take note, and if you learn them,
hopefully, pronouncing English place names should be
a lot easier, and to make it a little bit more fun
and to allow you guys to laugh at yourselves,
So you can comment below with your score.
I'm basically going to give you a little bit of time
to guess the pronunciation before I tell you what it is.
Let's see how many you get wrong.
Oh sorry, I should be more motivational,
let's see how many you get right. (giggling)
Before we get started, I would just like to thank
It is italki, and if you haven't heard of italki before,
of both native and non-native speakers
who give one to one video lessons 24/7.
You can learn English and over 100 other languages
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It's a really affordable way of improving
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than an offline teacher or an in person language academy.
So many of you message you say asking me
how you can meet and practise with native speakers,
this is a really good option for you
because they have qualified teachers,
but they also have community teachers,
which will help you practise conversation
and general fluency, and italki have kindly given me
You can get 10 dollars worth of italki credits
for free when you make your first lesson purchase.
All you have to do to get started
is click on the link in the description box.
Right, let's get on with the lesson and the quiz.
So we're going to be focusing on England today,
but if you would like to know about Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland, just the rest of Britain,
let me know in the comments, and I'll see if I can find
someone from those areas to help me out.
Now, I'm going to do it area by area,
and I'd like to start with Southern England,
simply because that's where I'm based.
Number one, how do you pronounce this beautiful city?
Number two, how do you pronounce this Oxfordshire town?
If you do want to go, it has a great designer outlet.
And I can assure you, before that designer outlet was built,
I was calling it Bicester, so you're not alone.
Number three, how do you pronounce this town
that's just outside of London?
Fun fact, I once had an iPhone stolen,
I never got it back. (giggling)
And number four, the last one of this section,
how do you pronounce this town?
And Reading Festival was the first festival
I ever went to, potentially the last.
Yeah, festivals aren't for me, turns out.
Someone jumped on my tent, not great.
Okay, let's move on to places in London.
This has a tube stop in London,
and it's where I went to university.
But it's now so widely mispronounced that who knows.
I'm sure I'll have a couple of opinions on this video
about how to pronounce Marylebone.
Number two, a little town in the borough of Hillington,
Number three, this is an area in central London.
It again has its own tube station.
It should be pronounced Holborn.
The next one is a borough of London.
I used to live here, and I started off mispronouncing it.
How would you pronounce this place?
This place has a football club, a very famous football team.
Now, I used a glottal stop there.
Okay, it should be pronounced Tottenham.
But, everyone I hear says Tottenham.
Don't ask me why, it's the way it is.
Next, where my brother-in-law to be lives.
How would you pronounce this place?
Okay, moving on to the Midlands.
There is a sauce named after this place.
How would you pronounce this city?
And the same goes for Leicester Square in London.
There is a fantastic university here.
It's always really good at sports.
but you might hear some people saying Loughborough.
But it should be borough, borough.
And the last one, how would you pronounce this city?
Okay, the first one, located in Yorkshire,
The next one, how would you pronounce this location?
It should be pronounced Keighley.
And the last one, this Cumbrian town,
Okay, let me know in the comments below how many
you got right, and please don't worry if your score is low.
It's almost like a gatekeeper.
If you can't say the places, we know you're not from here.
Now, I'm going to share a couple of rules with you
about suffixes to place names.
In general, knowing these suffixes will mean
you will automatically know how to pronounce
a wide variety of place names.
Okay, first we have, borough, borough.
For example, Bicester, Bicester.
For example, Salcombe, Salcombe.
This isn't a suffix, it's actually in the first syllable
of a word, it's on as in London and Tonbridge.
You can choose whichever you'd like.
And the last one, we have mouth, mouth.
Right, that's it for today's lesson.
Don't forget to share your scores,
and don't forget to contribute any other really difficult
The link is in the description box, and don't forget
I've got my Facebook, I've got my Instagram,
and I've got my Twitter, and I'll see you soon
for another lesson. (blows kiss)
Sometimes I forget how to swallow.
Oh back to the riverder where that's where I buy
my colouring pencils from, oh my god,
Okay.
You might hear some people saying Loughborough,
but it should be borough, borough.
(beeping)
(sneezes)
(laughs)