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.
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.
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.
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/.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Trending
Manchester United announce another big signing with Benjamin Šeško swoop
Danny Jones
Manchester United have confirmed a third big signing of the summer transfer window after seemingly swooping in to hijack a deal for Benjamin Šeško from a fellow Premier League team.
While perhaps not direct rivals, Man United look to have virtually snapped up highly sought-after Slovenian striker, Šeško, from the jaws of Newcastle, who appeared to be getting closer to sealing a deal following a second bid.
Roughly a week later, Ruben Amorim now has another attacking option to choose from, with Šeško arriving at Old Trafford on a deal worth reportedly upwards of £73.3 million.
Signing a five-year deal with the club, Šeško will earn around £160,000 a week when it comes to wages, with his contract also including potential add-ons, according to Sportklub writer Rok Viškovič.
United are said to be paying an initial fee of £66.3m, with the super-fast forward supposedly having made it clear that he preferred a move to United once he was made aware of their interest.
After the news broke of an agreement being reached, it didn’t take long for people to start tracking his equally quick turnaround flight, with the towering Bundesliga prospect – who clocks in at the same height as soon-to-be Man City rival, Erling Haaland – travelling to Manchester Airport on Thursday evening.
In fact, speaking of Haaland, a recently resurfaced quote should give fans plenty of food for thought ahead of his debut in red.
As the player with the most goals scored – 39, to be specific – of any player under 23 since he arrived in Germany in the middle of the 22/23 season, it’s no surprise that United moved quickly on the deal to bring Šeško to the English top flight.
With his medical believed to have been conducted that same night, his official unveiling as an MUFC player on Friday, 8 August, sees INEOS’ spending so far this season tip over the £200m mark, even despite having recorded their worst domestic finish in the modern era in the previous campaign.
Should the add-ons in the roughly £71m deal for Bryan Mbuemo, not to mention the approximately £62.5m and nearly £7m outlay (all possible bonuses considered) for young defender Diego Leon, materialise over the course of the next year or so, that figure is more like £215m.
They’re not messing around.
Manchester United's new front three in all competitions last season:
Benjamin Sesko: 🏟 45 games ⚽️ 21 goals 🅰️ 6 assists
Šeško will be presented in front of the Old Trafford faithful before their final 25/26 pre-season game against Fiorentina, where a special presentation will also be held in honour of former goalkeeper, David de Gea.
What do you make of Amorim‘s latest signings, and how well do you think Šeško is going to take to life in the most competitive league in the world?
Perhaps more importantly, what might it mean for some existing players?
Featured Images — Manchester United/Wikimedia Commons
Trending
My Chemical Romance fans are losing it as emo favourites appear to tease UK tour
Danny Jones
American alt-rock and emo favourites My Chemical Romance aren’t just back for one last Black Parade; it looks like they might be heading to the UK for more tour dates.
Not just a phase, never was.
My Chemical Romance (an entirely different kind of MCR) made yet another mighty return to the fore earlier this year, nearly two whole decades on from the release of the seminal album, which dropped in 2006 and has now been toured live again by the New Jersey band.
Playing the album IN FULL for the first time in years, they’ve been busy in North America delighting die-hard crowds, but now a recent teaser has got My Chem fans gearing up for UK and Ireland shows.
As you can see, MCR released the somewhat cryptic comedy sketch above, in which they seem to spoof a gameshow centred around a robot named ‘Quizzo’.
The host of this fictional programme goes on to explain that the result will determine “who will be the next lucky country to win the grand prize of one nuclear winter.”
It might only last for a few seconds, but the main takeaway is that the ‘who’ selected as the recipient of this upcoming prize is none other than the United Kingdom.
Combine that with a simple caption that reads, “Let’s show them what they’ve won”, it’d be hard not to jump to the conclusion that we Brits are about to pretend we’re ‘Teenagers’ again and chant ‘Na Na Na’ until our lungs give out.
In the time since the post went live, fans on this side of the pond have understandably started getting very excited…
My Chemical Romance are coming back to the UK… For the 1st time since 2022 when we all thought it would be the last hurrah…#MCRpic.twitter.com/vHWO5mK89j
At first, some were wondering whether this year’s revival might have also seen the resurrection of their much-mythologised but ultimately scrapped 2019 record, The Paper Kingdom, but it seems pretty much nailed on that their transatlantic followers are about to get some gigs.
It remains unclear whether these still TBC dates will be an extension of the current ‘Long Live The Black Parade‘ tour, which began on 11 July, or something new entirely.
Either way, with this current run of shows due to end in September and hints at a ‘nuclear winter’, it’s a fair assumption to guess that My Chemical Romance will be coming to the UK either later this year or early 2026 – and you bank on a big Manchester booking to be thrown in there too.
Emily Sergeant -
11th October 2021 
