Why do the British pronounce some words wrong?

Question

For example, Aluminum is pronounced differently. So is Potter (harry potter) - they pronounce it Pot-ah, rather than Paw-ter. There's an R in Potter for a reason. Pronounce it properly.

Other examples: Iran is pronounced E-rahn instead of E-ran.

Curry is pronounced ko-ree instead of cur-e. Amazing is pronounced uh-my-zing instead of uh-may-zing.

These are just a few. Why do they pronounce incorrectly? LOL could you imagine Hollywood movies with British accents? LOLOLOL

Answer 1

uh from looking that these answer people have put,  is everyone american on here? i'm confused because i thought i was on yahoo uk and ireland...confused!!!

or is it worldwide?

Answer 2

actually old chaps it is you who are mangling the words IE

we say left ..tenant you say loo tenant etc .

not a worry as our language isn't in fact English.

  its a mix of all sorts with french words, etc all borrowed and altered over time. it is a flexible language and is why France is  failing in it's legal battle to outlaw English words.

   even if we pronounce a word the same you will spell it differently eg. colour  becomes color and tyre is  tire.

so we are united by an uncommon language.

Answer 3

Maybe we're the ones pronouncing it wrong.  

The English language came from England, so  technically we Americans are the ones pronouncing it wrong.

Answer 4

They don't pronounce it incorrectly - they pronounce it differently. Don't be rude and uncultured - it's not nice to laugh at someone because they are different than you. It's how they are! According to them, Americans say things "wrong."

Answer 5

I think you should contact the British writer JK Rowling immediately & let her know she's been pronouncing the name of her character Harry Potter incorrectly. This will save her from any further embarassment

Answer 6

Why are you such a moron - pronounced More On.

Most of your examples are spurious or incorrect, which is hardly surprising - lets face it only a very small percentage of the people in your country have been speaking English for more than 3 generations and even your President finds it difficult to string two properly constructed sentences together.

Answer 7

Hi

You are a rude, insulting saddo, you pronounce words wrong and differently! we evolved the language over 1400 years, I love the US and Americans (truly) but you are a shining example of what gives the USA such a good name around the world, you bring arrogance to a new low.

Answer 8

Love all the answers.  Just one comment A-L-U-M-I-N-I-U-M read the letters and you get 'aluminium', try saying it ...  now where do you see aloominum, you've missed out letters!  Not that it matters, as a Geordie I don't pronounce many words the way those who speak the 'Queens English' would.  Ooh look at that it's the 'QUEENS ENGLISH' guess where she lives and which country she is queen of!!

Answer 9

It's solely because you are spelling it wrong, the correct spelling is Aluminium,  not Aluminum,..............And remember this: It's called the English language, not American language, we devised it, you abide by it.................................RE: The actors, how rich is that, coming from a country that had a cowboy for a president;  no breeding dear fellow.

PS: How's Arnie and Clint doing.

Answer 10

Get a grip!!! British people pronouce the words properly because - o you guessed it - we're British.  Obviously different parts of Britain pronounce words differently as I am sure different parts of America do  (I assume you are of course american!)  That would explain alot

Answer 11

When the British colonized America, they still pronounced "R"s. Over time, British English lost this feature while American English retained it. Some Americans also don't pronounce "R"s, like Bostonians, New Yorkers, and some Southerners, as well as the rare people who speak with the "upper class" Mid-Atlantic accent.

Answer 12

My guess is that the British think that WE are the ones who pronounce words funny.

And we drive on the wrong side of the road, too.  ;)

Answer 13

Wow, I'm in awe of your great sadness. I don't know whether to sympathise with your stupidity or to laugh at you and call you a r****d... but then I wouldn't want to insult retards in doing so.

Hang on a sec, Titanic... Kate Winslet had a British accent, if I'm not mistaken... I think... maybe... just maybe... that was a Hollywood movie.. hmm

Answer 14

We Brits think the Americans pronounce words wrong,it's our native language so how can we pronounce our words wrongly? America is a relatively new country compared to Britain.I could throw your statement back at you and say that Americans are lazy in how they pronounce the English language,but its just a culture thing I think,Americans don't speak British English but American English-if you get  me?

Answer 15

And there's a W in Potter is there?

It's called an accent and why should people who live in foreign countries speak with another country's accent? Are you promoting world domination? After 'saving us' from the n***s you want to pick up where they left off eh?

Oh and, just to remind you, the language is called English and we were speaking it before your accent, and country, were even mispronouncing your first word.

Answer 16

you are being  very sad and shallow and jaded by hollywood's generic accent.  Listen to the people from around america and you will hear many accents.  England is neither wrong nor right same for America or anywhere else for that matter.

Answer 17

We dont....You do. lol.

I am british and this is how i pronounce them:

ali-min-e-um

po-ter

I-rahn

Cur-e

a-may-zing

That's just how we say things- so to us you say it wrong.

(and technically we did kinda create the language)

Americans say tum-ae-toe when we pronounce it tom-ar-to.

Answer 18

Have you not noticed there is no "W"  in Potter, so why invent one? Pronounce it properly yourself, before criticising us!!! and as for the rest of the words, I don't know ANYONE in Britain that pronounces curry, ko-ree, or amazing uh-my-zing.

Maybe you would be wise to remember that YOU  are speaking OUR language, E.N.G.L.I.S.H. guess where the word aluminum derives from? YES, you got it, A.L.U.M.I.N.I.U.M , maybe if you stopped changeing the spellings of OUR  words you wouldn't need to criticise, and make yourself look so bloody stupid. It's OUR language, and we will pronounce our words the way WE want to. You have made yourself look SO  rediculous by criticising the way English people pronounce the E.N.G.L.I.S.H. language.

Answer 19

We English pronounce words depending on our accent ,just like Americans,Canadians,Aussies etc .generally we dont pronounce the t's and H's in words /House is pronounced a wus and words ending in t like don't are pronounced "donh".It's not wrong nor right it's how we speak.

Potter would be po hah and amazing would be a may zin.

Having differing accents is good why do we all have to sound the same??

Answer 20

Why, if you meet a stranger from a faraway land you would say, "Do you speak English?"

Why would you not say, "Do you speak American?"

The British cannot pronounce anything wrong as the inventors, just follow the masters and stop kidding yourself.

Answer 21

just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong.

there are lots of big british movies around

anyway most of those examples is how australians (like me :) talk same with some south africans

Answer 22

No Americans pronounce it wrong as the original pronunciation was done here in Britain

Why do you lot say Z as in 'ZEEE' When it is pronounced 'Zed'

Answer 23

As we invented the langauge it is obviously correct you big "dufus"! you can pronounce that any way you like my treat

Answer 24

Okay all them pronounciations u just made are all rong, no one in england speaks like that apart from da queen ok. And also there are different accents in england anyway, think of a london accent, it aint posh. You speak the english language, don't try knock it. Northern england people pronounce words completely different to how southern english people pronounce words. Don't think that englands all queen and country, its not at all, its more like flick knifes, ballies, gats, needles, junkies. Our lifestyle is no different 2 where your from which im guessin is america, whether it be nice areas of the us or the uk, or bad areas, lifestyles aint different, except we're a smaller country, and i know this aint know place to be arguin about what areas worse or better, but londons 3 times more dangerous then new york now and londons smaller, and most cities in england are all the same, stop being ignorant get me? Don't get rude about suttin you don't know nuttin about, check them posh ways your tryna make us out to be with dem pronounciations, sort it out mayteee

Answer 25

it`s the way we talk cocker-i gather you`re not British!

there are `many` accents affecting way some words are `heard`!

Liverpool/Birmingham etc!

the Americans don`t just have words that `sound` different-they `substitute` different words IE: f***y for arxx and touche for xxxxxxxxx-not wishing to be crude!

my mother got a cultural shock when visiting and told to sit on her f***y-true!

there are hundreds of films with British accents/actors/esses!

we `get by` lol.

your question is not i consider racial/offencive but your `powers of observation` are not exactly uh-my-zing ilmao.

Answer 26

English was made in England, they are the original speakers of the language, thus the way they speak is in fact using the original pronunciations and therefor not wrong. Of course there are certain regions in England where people have strange and unintelligible accents but its the same here in north America.

If anything, we pronounce some words wrong.

Iran is pronounced Irahn in farsi (the dominant iranian language), therefor it is the correct pronunciation. I don't know what the original pronunication of curry is but I'm sure we both got it wrong.

Answer 27

I'm not british, but i do live in Britain and i guess i have a similar accent.

The pronunciation of words isn't what worries me the most.

What i'd like to know is why on Earth do americans think that the world begins and ends with America?

Why do they think that they are always right, while everyone else is wrong?

There's a term called an 'accent'.

Look it up in the dictionary.

Besides, the britsh took on english as their national language BEFORE the americans did, so don't you think it's more logical that you are the ones who pronounce things incorrectly?

Stupid american, typical.

Answer 28

Wow, you really are judgemental and think if it's not done your way it's the wrong way. Have you not seen movies like Bridget Jone's Diary? They have British accents in that one. Same with The Holiday.

Just because the British pronounce it differently than Americans doesn't make it wrong. I love learning the ways British pronounce things, it takes me a minute to figure it out sometimes though, lol!

Answer 29

Au contraire, mon ami. We in This Sceptred Isle actually DO pronounce words correctly. After all, the English language was invented in England. That's why it's called English.

We accept that foreigners are prone to getting some wrong because, by definition, English is their second language.

Citizens of the USA are from many origins so they all have many "first languages". That probably explains why they all pronounce and spell English incorrectly.

For example:

"route" should be pronounced "root", not "raut" as Hollywood actors seem to prefer;

"aeroplane" is correct , "airplane" is lazy.

Aluminum is a mis-spelling of aluminium, which we DO pronounce correctly.

Harry Potter is a personal name, as such it correctly pronunced Potter, with an R. Some people are genetically incapable of pronouncing R at the end (or beginning) of a word. These exist anywhere in the world and it's not their fault.

Answer 30

Oooh, you're in for a real bashing with that question!!!

For a start, I'm Scottish and we do pronounce the "R" in words so let's get that out of the way.

As you may or may not be aware, the English language is influenced heavily by Latin as we were once occupied by the Roman Empire in large parts of Britain.  Most countries who speak English speak it because of the large amounts of Irish, Scottish (and some English) who emigrated there.  The Australian accent is similar to the London cockney and the American accent is a mish mash of all accents blended and is not so regional as in the UK.

The word aluminium is pronounced al-yoo-min-ee-um in the UK because we like our words to sound Latin.  Same reason why we use Autumn instead of "Fall" even though Fall was the original English word which eventually travelled to America but remained unchanged.  (Source QI book of ignorance).

As for Iran.  It's probably not pronounced either way in their own country - it may not even sound similar.  In the same way that Germany is only pronounced Germany here but there they call it Deutschland.  

As for British/Australian accents in Hollywood, well most of them change their accents to American to fit in (Michelle Ryan, Anna Friel, Nicole Kidman, Mel Gibson, Cary Grant, Ewan McGregor etc.).  A lot never change it such as Hugh Grant.

Answer 31

The English language has borrowed many words from other countries & there are many regional dialect's in England.

I say EN-velope (envelope) but other's pronounce it ON-velope. Auction I pronounce ORK-tion (How would you pronounce it - in American English? it's impossible to say the word as it is written) others here pronounce it OX-tion.

Have you ever thought that the English language doesn't have stresses on words like Spanish or French do? (goes back to your Aluminium statement) we say Alu-min-um in three sylabuls you say Alum-inum in only two. I would be interested to know which particular British accent you are referring to because this is only one example.