by MacHairy » Fri Aug 05, 2022 8:36 pm
I'm sure this has been thrashed over before, but I had the choice of finding a years-old thread to continue or just start a new one, which I have done. Forgive me if that was the wrong decision.
Out on a trip recently I was explaining to a fellow traveller that right after the trip I was going to have to go with due haste to one of the smaller ferries to Mull, starting off from Glenfinnan at the time.
She asked me where they went from and to, and I had the sense that I was being led into a trap when she dissolved into giggles when I said, "Well, one goes from 'Lochalinn' to 'Fish-Nish' and the other from 'Kilhoan' to Tobermory". I should say that I have a soft Tyneside accent so maybe she was just hoping to hear mangled Geordie versions of familiar names.
For Kilchoan, well, I used to pronounce that 'Kilchoan' because that's how it looks written down, until I was mildly admonished by one of the Calmac crew and told that it was 'Kil-hoan'.
What of Fishnish, though? How's that one pronounced? And what of Salen, which I've always pronounced like 'Sailin' until my hostess last time on Mull pronounced it like 'Saalen'. And Ffionnphort?
Sometimes if's not hard to guess the sound of the syllables but not always obvious which one has the emphasis, so for example is Morar 'MOR-rar' or 'Mor-RAR'? Is Mallaig 'MALLaig', or 'MallAIG'?
You can tell from the above that I spend far too much time looking at my beloved Ordnance Survey maps and virtually no time talking to people, but that's just how it is.
Are there any other commonly mispronounced town or village names? (Let's stick to those and not involve Gallic names of mountains, or this will be the longest thread in history). One of the favourites must be Milngavie which I'm given to understand is 'Mul-guy'.