Aitches

When I was at school our teacher taught us a rhyme to remember how to pronounce the letter H (or ‘a itches are wrong’ it means you are dropping your H). It went like this:

Old Harry Oakes,

Host of the Hare and Hounds,

Has Hard, and Horribly Horny Hands!

We had to stand up and say this in class! I think it’s because we all had Birmingham accents and he wanted us to sound more middle class!

I can remember a few more rhymes and nursery rhymes that have popped into my mind recently. Is this a sign of getting old?

Ever seen this Welsh place name?

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Have you ever seen this Welsh village name?

The pronunciation is written out, but Clan and clant are more like cthlan and cthlant…

Photo and pronunciation by my friend on Facebook.

From wiki journey ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (Llanfair PG for short) is a small, quiet town on the island of Anglesey off the northwest coast of North Wales, famous for having the longest place name in Europe. Apart from its name it is similar to other nearby villages.

Literally translated, the name means: [The] church of [St.] Mary (Llanfair) [of the] pool (pwll) of the white hazels (gwyn gyll) near [lit. “over against”] (go ger) the rapid whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the church of [St.] Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (-ogo[f] goch).

Hello duck!

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This was a sign in a local museum that someone shared on Facebook.

It was strange coming to live here. In my home town people would say hello chick, or love. But Stoke people say ‘duck’. I had no idea of the origins, and the first few times I heard it I literally did duck! I thought someone was warning me! Eventually, though, I got used to the greeting. Together with the phrase ‘cost kick a bow agin a woe an it it wi yer hed til ya bost it?’ I may have misspelt this but it means ‘Can you kick a ball against a wall and hit it with your head until you burst it?’

As you can see, the old dialect and pronunciation is interesting. But as someone with a west Midlands accent. Oim not reealy botheered abowt iyt.