Where on Earth are you!? Show us the sights from your part of the world

Still, not a Ton or Town…

Although the common abbreviation of Southampton is So’ton…

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Wikipedia tells me that “Sutton” is a worn-down form of “South Town”, and there are about seventy Suttons in the UK.

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That makes sense…

Although apart from Sutton in South London… and I thing I remember a Sutton hyphenated name somewhere in the Midlands, I didn’t come across that many in my travels… chance, I guess…

Sutton Coldfield, I expect.

Damn you yanks naming two towns with the same name! We’d never do that here.

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There’s a Sutton-in-Ashfield near my hometown

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New Hampshire has a Berlin, a Milan, and a Chichester, but they’re pronounced differently: Berlin (and the other two as well) has the emphasis on the first syllable rather than the second;
Milan is pronounced “My-lin”;
Chichester is pronounced “Chy-chestah”.

There is a Thames river in Connecticut, but the “th” is fully voiced (θ) and also has an ā.

European visitors would recognize the names on our roadsigns and maps, but not if they heard some of them. :laughing:

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The really good thing about being just outside High Wycombe is that we have red kites (Milvus milvus). They were reintroduced in England in the 1980s and, now that poisoning vermin on farmland is illegal, are thriving.

If it’s daylight and not raining and I look at the sky, I usually see at least one kite, often more.

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I recommend never travellilng to Missouri:

  • Versailles, MO - pronounced ver-SAILS
  • Bolivar, MO - rhymes with Oliver
  • Pomme de Terre, MO - prounounced puhm-de-TAHR
  • Lebanon, MO - LEB-uh-nun
  • Bois D’Arc, MO - bo-DARK
  • New Madrid, MO - MAD-drid
  • Milan, MO - MY-lun
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You are all wrong.

And that’s coming from a person who lives near Lympne

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Cornwall has its fair share of place names like that:

  • Mousehole - “Mow-zul”
  • Launceston - often said “Lan-sun”

and the best of all:

  • Fowey - “Foy”

That’s before you get as far as having just outright unusual names. There’s a village called Minions, and the perpetually amusing Cocks.

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Lebanon, NH is pronounced in exactly the same manner as Lebanon, MO, but Dublin, NH (where I spent my salad days at boarding school) is pronounced in exactly the same way as its namesake. There must be some shadowy phonetic conspiracy behind all of this! :thinking:

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Speaking of unusual place names, my favorite is the village of Wetwang (Yorkshire). Perhaps my UK friends can confirm that the TV game show NUMBERWANG was first produced there? :smirk:

That’s numberwang!

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Massachusetts has its fair share of name pronunciations. The big one is Worcester (wuh-stir), but Gloucester (glah-stir) is good as well. If you want to annoy anyone who’s even semi-local, call it glauw-ses-ter! It works every time. :slight_smile:

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I work near villages called

Llwynypia
Penrhiwceiber
Ynysybwl

There’s a bit of Cardiff called Rhiwbina.

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A couple of years ago my wife bought me this amazing poster. I love silly place names.

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