Cloth Ears

From Facebook archive, and today

28 March 2020 at 14:04 ·

"I had Keith Floyd on the telly this morning, he was in Llandybie, and he pronounced it correctly*."
“How would you know?”
"Because you've told me how, often and at considerable length."

I've never quite forgotten, or forgiven, him calling it 

Lan-dee-by. 

It's not a place I'm particularly fond of but it's the principal of the thing.

Mr Earth  Things have principles?

PH  It's so difficult though. Many place names can't be worked out from mere spellings.

Bentonbag  Perhaps, but he'd heard me say it plenty of times.   

This may be racist but I'm afraid the majority of the monoglot English simply don't listen

I've just read this out to him and he said "Good God yes. That's not racist. That's just true."

 

*Llan-duh-bee-yeh.  Llan (as in llan), duh as in dumb, bee as in sting, yeh as in yet

 

A particular bete-noir of mine, and possibly most people brought up in Wales, is the English’s seeming inability to pronounce ll; found at the start of innumerable Welsh place names.  

Yet they manage the same sound in the middle of Llanelli. 

It is not Clan or Flan but Llan.   

In my experience Irish, Scots, French, Spanish and other nationalities have no problem with it.

According to the Collins-Spurrel Welsh Dictionary ll is “produced by placing the tongue to pronounce l, then emitting breath without voice.”    

Try it, gently, it’s not hard, nor is it necessary to cover your surroundings in spittle when doing it.

 

There was once an agonizing three-day-live Time Team Special digging up a Roman Fort at Llandeilo, the town nearest to where I was brought up.  Tony Robinson and Carenza Lewis insisted on calling it Landy-low or Lan-dillow (rhyming with pillow) but never Lan-die-lo (rhymes with lilo).   The presenters must have been staying in the town (it has some lovely hotels) and had meetings with the locals, but seemingly hadn't heard or bothered to pick up the correct pronounciation.

 

As my English (Geordie) mother would have said “Have they got cloth ears?”