[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Speaking 'properly'

[Sue Wartell]

--- Ali <Ali at zymurgy.org> wrote:
> 
> Funnily enough, "Burkshire" used to be the local
> pronunciation of Berkshire. ...<snip>.... But then I
 
> also live in a town called "Reading" which is 
> pronounced as "Redding" -

I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, very near the
city of Reading (Redding), which was the county seat
of Berks (burks) County.  One of the main shopping
centers in Reading was the Berkshire (burk-sheer)
Mall. (A side note is that nearby was Bucks county.)

So apparently we kept some of the old pronunciations
and lost others, or perhaps retained some that shifted
back in the country of origin.

I'm not entirely convinced that the place name
pronounciations in the British Isles in general are
not an elaborate joke on the entire rest of the world.
 As in, "Let's just see how silly we can make these
people look" - a mild enough form of entertainment, to
be sure.

As for the "correct" pronounciation, I think it's
whatever the folks who live there say it is.  And if
they can't agree, I think I'll just give it up as a
bad job and spell it out.


Sue

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