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 1975 and Charli XCX drop collab teaser in Manchester city centre
Danny Jones
Manchester, we might have a collaboration between two of the biggest British acts around right now as local lads The 1975 and pop sensation Charli XCX look to have just teased something big right here in the city centre.
It’s fair to say that if 2023 was the biggest year of The 1975‘s career to date then 2024 has very much been Charli XCX’s. In fact, we’d say it’s been a pretty great 12 months or so for pop music in general, which it feels like we don’t get to say that often.
That being said, despite the Cambridge-born singer having only just released her smash-hit BRAT back in June, is already ramping up for more new music to be dropped.
A massive new poster has appeared near Piccadilly and not only is it the bright lime green and plain black font now synonymous with her album but the words also read “the 1975” backwards.
It looks like this could finally be The 1975 x Charli XCX collab so many fans have been waiting for and there’s plenty of reason to believe it could be coming very soon.
For starters, rumours of the two working together have been running ever since the 32-year-old became partners with the band’s drummer, producer and co-songwriter, George Daniel, who has regularly appeared with her on stage at the likes of Boiler Room, not to mention sharing mixes of her songs.
She also came out as a surprise guest during their second-to-last visit to Manchester and the AO Arena back in January 2023 – much to the delight of the crowd.
Furthermore, Charli recently announced her next project rather straightforwardly called Brat and it’s completely different but still also brat.
While there are no other discernible clues to take from the rather large billboard, the title alone, George Daniel’s involvement and her own penchant for DJing of late quickly led people to piece together that she is planning to release a reworked version of her sixth studio album.
Moreover, Charli (real name Charlotte Emma Aitchison) has already revealed a number of feature artists on the remixed version of BRAT, including Addison Rae, Robyn, Billie Eilish and Yung Lean, as well as Troye Sivan and Lorde, who both joined her on stage recently for the ‘Sweat Tour’.
As already confirmed, whatever this new project ends up sounding like, it’s coming out next Friday, 11 October and if the collabs we already know about are anything to go by, then it’s a pretty safe bet that The 1975 will be also a appear on a tune or two. Who knows, maybe it could be something even bigger?
‘Bratty Healy’ is born, whether you like it or not.
Featured Images — The Manc Group/Press Image (supplied)
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Robbie Williams is releasing a big budget biopic later this year – only it stars him as a monkey?…
Danny Jones
Robbie Williams has always been a true popstar but he’s never exactly played it paint by numbers, which is why learning that his upcoming biopic features him as a CGI monkey sounds much less random than it would be coming from anyone else.
There have been countless big-budget movies about rockstars and famous musicians even in just the past few years – One Love about Bob Marley, Back to Black about Amy Winehouse, Elvis and even the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic – but there is a single one we could name where the star is a monkey.
Announced this week, BETTER MAN will tell the story of Robbie Williams’ life and career right up until the present day and is set to be released this festive period.
The first trailer has now dropped too and whatever you make of the concept, visually at least, looks pretty good – only time will tell whether it’s a good film or not.
First trailer for the Robbie Williams biopic ‘BETTER MAN’, starring a CGI monkey as Robbie Williams.
The tagline for the film is, “Discover an extraordinary journey that can’t be told in an ordinary way” and as Williams addresses in the short teaser, starting by simply saying, “I know what you’re thinking? What’s with the monkey?”, they’ve certainly found a way to tell this story diferently.
In fact, although telling his story through the medium of a monkey wasn’t his idea to begin with and, as he and director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) told the likes of Heart Radio, there’s a few reasons for it.
First off, Robbie said of the film and its vision: “I want everything that I do from here on in to be slightly unusual, so that fits that narrative.”
“As humans, we care more for animals than we do for humans. So the audience is probably going to have more empathy for me as a monkey than they would’ve done for me as me.” That’s a fair point: a cute CGI monkey can definitely be rooted for, but it’s Gracey’s explanation that makes it sound most interesting.
As he puts it, the idea to make a furry version of the 50-year-old came from looking to reflect the hitmaker being “pushed on stage” like a “performing monkey” throughout his life, even when heavily under the influence of durgs and alcohol. But it goes much deeper than that.
“This is how he sees himself.” Director Michael Gracey explains why Robbie Williams is a monkey in #BetterManMovie – In select US theatres December 25. Everywhere in the US January 17. pic.twitter.com/GBSyFNfRe5
The Australian director, who also headed up fellow pop music icon P!nk’s autobiographical documentary, goes on to explain: “He was always putting on a performance at [his hometown] Stoke for the other kids, at home for his parents.
“It made it so powerful for me because I was like, You’re going to fall in love with this character, this little monkey. And you’re going to invest emotionally in this little monkey. As long as you set that contract at the start of the film, you’re in, and you will go with that monkey through the entire journey.”
Robbie will be played and largely voiced by Chesterfield-born actor Jonno Davies via motion capture technology, not unlike that used for the Planet of the Apes films, with the story spanning his fractious childhood to boy band success with Take That and then solo superstardom.
Still one of the best-selling and most well-known pop stars to ever do it, he will naturally take full control of the singing sections in the film as well as provide narration.
As he put its himself in the voiceover we’ve now heard, “I’m one of the biggest pop stars in the world but I’ve always seen myself a little less… evolved”. The stylistic choice has certainly split opinion already, with some calling it a “fantastic” approach from a “working class lad” who made it. Others have only found the immediate humour in it thus far.
idea for a film… the life of Robbie Williams told through the perspective of a CGI monkey pic.twitter.com/UhVtr4O8cX
Set to release on Boxing Day 2024, the blockbuster project from Paramount Pictures also features Steve Pemberton, Damon Herriman’ Raechelle Banno, Alison Steadman, Kate Mulvaney; Frazer Hadfield, Tom Budge and Anthony Hayes.
With a budget of a reported $110 million, the movie has actually already been debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and was met with pretty positive reviews, with The Guardian giving it four stars and labelling it a “surprisingly entertaining saga.”
As for us, we will say that we’d probably have watched a Robbie Williams biopic anyway, but let’s just say it being told through the lens of a monkey has very much piqued our interest.
There’s also another feature-length project still being made right here in Manchester that we’re very much keeping our eye on.
Emily Sergeant -
11th October 2021 
