While it’s certainly managed to position itself as the access language to the rest of the world over the years, with a total of 378 million native speakers and 743 million non-native speakers currently dotted across the globe, there’s no denying it’s a tricky one to pick up.
This 1,400 year old West Germanic language – with close to 50 regional dialect variations in just the UK alone – gives even native speakers many a chance to slip up in their pronunciations from time to time.
Nothing illustrates this more perfectly that the pronunciations of place / location names.
Here in Greater Manchester, our ten boroughs are filled with place names that commonly get mispronounced by anyone other than local residents, so we’ve picked out 10 that are most likely to catch people out.
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Let’s set the record straight.
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1. Daubhill
This area of Bolton is often known to catch even some of the borough’s residents out themselves, so don’t worry if you’re confused by it.
While many would presume it’s ‘dawb-hill / dowb-hill’, it’s actually closer to /dobble/.
2. Blackley
Another one where you’ll need to ignore the way it’s spelled if you want to pronounce it correctly, as it’s not ‘black-ly’ like the colour.
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It’s /blake-ly/ instead.
3. Beswick
This pronunciation may be a little easier to have a crack at first time round if you’re familiar with other similar words and place names across the country.
Think Keswick, Warwick, Alnwick and so on.
Basically, the ‘w’ is silent, just forget it’s there – it’s pronounced /bez-ick/.
4. Greenacres
If we take this Oldham place name, most of us not from the area would likely split the word into two and presume it’s pronounced the same as ‘green’ and ‘acres’ – but we’d be wrong.
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In reality, locals tend to pronounce it as /grin-ickers/.
5. Hulme
This one’s a pretty common word name in the Manchester borough.
Whether it’s used for the area of Hulme itself, or as a suffix to other areas such as Levenshulme, Davyhulme, Cheadle Hulme and so on, people often have trouble pronouncing it.
If you want to get it right, you’ll need to ignore the fact there’s an ‘l’ in there, as it’s silent.
It’s pronounced more like /hewm/.
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6. Altrincham
If we’re talking about pronunciations that don’t make sense, this one’s got to be up there.
The affluent Trafford town attracts crowds from far and wide, and those crowds probably all pronounced the name incorrectly on the first try.
That ‘ch’ sound is actually pronounced as ‘g’.
So rather than it being ‘Altrin-ch-am’ or ‘Altrin-kam’, the pronunciation is actually closer to /oltrin-gum/ instead.
7. Baguley
We’re convinced they stuck the ‘u’ in this place name for fun as a way to trip people up when they try to pronounce it.
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For some reason, it’s actually just pronounced /bag-ly/.
8. Whalley Range
No, we’re not referring to the second word in this particular place name, luckily that’s pronounced exactly as you’d expect.
Whalley, on the other hand, can cause some slip-ups as it’s another case of a silent letter creeping into a spelling and confusing matters, so you’ll want to ignore the fact there’s a ‘h’ in there, and pronounce it closer to /wall-y/.
This isn’t to be confused with the neighbouring Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge either, as that one’s pronounced /wayl-y/.
Confused yet?
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9. The Haulgh
Yet another Bolton place name that catches even the best of us out.
By looking at the spelling of this one, it’d be easy for most of us Northerners to presume it’s pronounced ‘halsh’ thanks to the popular local bakery chain Greenhalgh’s – which is also a common surname – but again, we’d be wrong.
It’s pronounced the /hoff/.
10. Bury
We had to stick one that’s a bit up for debate on this list, didn’t we?
In the case of this Greater Manchester borough, the pronunciation of the name is very much open for interpretation depending on who you ask, and whoever you ask is likely to be very adamant that their pronunciation is correct too.
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It’s either /burry/ or /berry/ – and if we’re honest, the latter is more commonly used.
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BONUS – Godmanchester
Okay, so this one isn’t in Greater Manchester at all, it’s actually a little town that lies in Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, but we obviously don’t need to explain why we’ve chosen to stick it on the end of this list.
What we do need to explain is how it’s pronounced, though.
Us Mancunians only need to take one look at this place name to presume it’s pronounced /god-man-chester/, like our wonderful city, just with ‘god’ added in front, but we’d couldn’t be further from correct.
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It’s actually pronounced /gum-ster/.
Why it’s pronounced that way is simply down to regional dialect and nothing else – we can’t really explain it.
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The player celebrations from Stockport County’s League Two trophy presentation are glorious
Danny Jones
If you’re a Stockport County fan, you’ve had a very good year as the Hatters have just been crowned League Two champions and will be back in the English third tier next season – safe to say they’ve been making most of the trophy celebrations.
Players and staff very much included.
Edgeley was filled with flares and even people climbing on rooftops when they officially secured promotion back to League One for the first time in 12 years – the second time they’ve managed to go up in three seasons – and there was a great attendance in Stockport town centre for the bus parade.
But it was last week’s trophy presentation back at the stadium that produced some of the most memorable scenes, with County topping off a season of impressive and often high-scoring performances on the pitch with plenty more pageantry. Cue the music.
We still haven’t stopped laughing at Kyle Knoyle.
From bringing Isaac Olaofe’s ‘Tanto’s on fire!’ chant to life to hammering home puns on names like Fraser Horsfall, no matter how obvious, these are the kind of deeply unserious celebrations we expect from a trophy presentation.
County fan or not, you’ve got to admit it looks like a good party.
It’s moments like these that players, fans and staff work hard all season for; to prat around like muppets in front of their adoring supporters. They even got assistant coach, Clint Hill, in the mix and, as it turns out, he proved to be one of the biggest ring-leaders.
We sincerely hope the Hatters keep trickling out more of these party scenes as we know there’s plenty more that fans would love to watch back.
We’re still yet to see captain Paddy Madden, who won Player of the Month for April, and the gaffer himself, Dave Challinor, who has comfortably secured his legacy as one of the club’s all-time greats.
Challinor and the club have made no secret of seriously eyeing up the Championship and who knows what else at County’s momentum continues to build, especially with a huge stadium redevelopment kicking off soon.
What do you reckon, Hatters – do you reckon a third promotion could be on the cards?
Liam Gallagher says he’ll ‘gig in Lidl’ if Co-op Live still isn’t ready – and they sound pretty game for it
Danny Jones
Following the ongoing palaver with Co-op Live, Liam Gallagher has joked that he’d happily play his scheduled gigs in a Lidl if the arena still isn’t ready – at least we think he’s joking…
With Liam Gallagher having been named as one of the first acts booked to play Co-op Live last year, many are now wondering whether the venue will even by June, with the former Oasis frontman set to play four Definitely Maybe 30th-anniversary sets. That being said, he’s come up with a solution if not.
Vintage LG, we’ll give him that.
Obviously a bit of a tongue-in-cheek quip at the venue being sponsored by a supermarket and convenience store chain, it could have been any other competitor that the ever-witty youngest Gallagher brother picked but it somehow made it extra funny that he chose a budget brand like Lidl.
However, with the 51-year-old already having fun with stunts like voicing the tannoys on the Metrolink last year, for instance, we wouldn’t put it past him to take this joke a little further.
Better still, not that we’re getting carried away or anything but Lidl themselves seem pretty keen on the idea too; they even spent the time to build an entire setlist for the fictional show. Fair play.
Can you imagine? Liam Gallagher swapping the occasional tambourine shake for beeps from a barcode scanner as he moves back and forth on the conveyor belt. We know it’s absolute nonsense and we definitely shouldn’t be even remotely considering it… BUT it’s the stuff of dreams and strange things have happened.
A lot of stranger things have happened this week alone. As for the latest with Co-op Live, the Chairman and CEO of key-backers Oak View Group, Tim Leiweke, issued a full statement sharing his “sincere apologies”and insisting that they understand “there is work to be done to rebuild your trust in us.”
With the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Peter Kay, The Black Keys and more having their gigs pulled by the venue due to numerous issues, including an air conditioning unit falling from the ceiling, fans are understandably fearful that other upcoming events could face delays or general misfortune.
Much like the venue itself, we imagine we’ll be playing catch-up on this whole saga for the foreseeable, but here’s a recap of the story so far: