How to pronounce British place names

(By Jane Lawson)

Sometimes the names of British cities, towns and villages are pronounced differently from their spelling? It’s because the names are often more than 1000 years old, and the pronunciation has changed over the centuries.

One of the most famous British cities is Oxford, which has one of the world’s oldest universities, Oxford university. But the original meaning of Oxford is ‘Place where ox can cross a shallow part of the river’ An OX is a bull, and a FORD is a shallow part of a river, where you can cross easily without a bridge. You can see some cows doing this in the picture. So, in ancient Britain, this place was known as Ox-Ford. There are many places in Britain with the ending –ford, for example Bradford or Stratford, and this always means ‘shallow place in a river.’ But the ending –ford is now always pronounced -fəd.

If a place name ends in –caster, –cester or -chester, then we know that this place was a Roman town over 1600 years ago, when the Romans occupied Britain. The endings -caster, –cester or -chester come from CASTRA, which means ‘military town’, or ‘fort’ in Latin, the language of the Romans. Our English word ‘castle’ comes from this word. But if a place name ends in –cester, it usually is pronounced as -ster. For example, we say Leicester, Gloucester, and Worcester. But if a place name ends in -chester or -caster, we usually pronounce the ending more clearly. For example, we say Winchester, Dorchester, Lancaster and Doncaster.

Another place name ending that is often mispronounced is -mouth. If a place name ends with -mouth, it means this place is at the mouth of a river – where the river meets the sea. So, Dartmouth is at the mouth of the River Dart, Weymouth is at the mouth of the River Wey, Exmouth is at the mouth of the River Exe, and so on.

Грамматика

Основные типы вопросов в английском языке

Общий вопрос.

Общий вопрос относится ко всему предложению в целом, и ответом на него будут слова yes или nо:

Do you like ice-cream? — Yes, I do.

Can you speak English? - Yes, I can.

Are you a schoolboy? — No, I am not.

Have you bought a text book? - Yes, I have.

Порядок слов в общем вопросе.

1) вспомогательный (модальный, глагол-связка) глагол,

2) подлежащее (существительное или местоимение),

3) смысловой глагол (или дополнение).

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