Somerset has a new Lord Lieutenant: Mohammed Saddiq. That old civic title got me thinking about pronunciation.  

The story of ‘lieutenant’ is a story about two varieties of English: the -f version (forgive eye-dialect here) “lef-tenant” is British English and “loo-tenant” is its US cousin. I’m not sure many younger speakers have it quite that clear cut between British and US English. We are used to hearing the Americanisation of the English language: ‘schedule’ is it “sh-edule” or “sk-edule” for you? 

‘Lieutenant’ translates as ‘the tenant controlling the place’ and while its meaning has shifted radically, there have been debates about its pronunciation for centuries. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggests a mis-reading of ‘lieu’ for ‘liev’ over time, then confusion between hearing -v sounds and -f sounds may have led Britain to ‘lef-tenant’. 

While that may cause a ripple in an A-level English Language class, a greater stir comes from the discussion of more local, vernacular, word forms. There is seldom smoke without fire – and for that we might turn to ‘chimley’.  

Back as far as the late 1600s phonetics critic, Christopher Cooper, included the western ‘chimney/chimley’ variant in his account of “barbarous dialects”. In the 2020s, at Richard Huish College, there are now but a few of us who openly admit to having grown up with ‘chimley’ but we are still here.  

A more dramatic divide still has always come from ‘scone’. So much so, that a senior member of college staff once sidled up to me, confidentially, and quizzed: “What is the academic view of how to say it?”. 

‘Scone’ is one of many words which has different, acceptable pronunciations. Do you rhyme it with “own” or “on”? Some say one variant (or the other) is class-marked - posh - others that one is more regional.  

The OED gives word history of ‘scone’ as coming from Dutch ‘schoonbrot’ (a white bread) but also notes our word is likely of Scottish in origin. So perhaps ‘sc-oon’ would be more fitting? And let’s not even ask about butter, cream or jam first:  it’s a local thing. 

Another local-ish thing is one of my favourite word stories: ‘Bristol’. This old “place by the bridge” or ‘Bric-stow’ gradually merged with what academics call the ‘intrusive -l’. This led to the name slowly changing to “Bri-sto-l”.  

These words are living fossils of local pronunciation variation. And that is the point: many pronunciation debates hint at the historical origins of words that we have just forgotten across time. The ‘Anglish’ language at its best. 

Marcus Barrett is teacher & Course Manager of English Language A-level at Richard Huish College and a Director of The English Project, Winchester.