...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Forever explaining to Johnny Foreigner that it's pronounced "burtonsmith".

--G.
(in much the same way that Fanshaw is evidently spelled Featherstonehaugh.)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Or Leicester is "Lester". Much like other "Cester" places like Worcester, Gloucester and Cirencester.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Mmm, love that wooster sauce. And, o'course, WPI as the canonical example here.

The whole of the British Isles suffers from idiosyncratic spelling in that fashion - over in Ireland, for instance, there's this whole other thing with names, like "Cuchulainn" (Pronounced 'coo cullen'); Conchobar mac Nessa (pronounced 'connor'); and any of dozens of people named Bodb (pronounced "bove") and Badb ("baev")

Less length, but the pronunciation just gets wild.

Irish orthography is more complicated because it's got this broad-slender consonant thing going on and a bunch of contextually silent vowels. I think it's still not as complicated as English or even French, though.

Funny you should bring up Spanish; there's a -fascinating- thread going around on the tweeters about why 'Mexico' is written that way that centers around a specific pronunciation shift in Medieval Spanish happening at the same time as they encountered Nahuatl-speaking peoples in Central America

English-speakers often nominate Welsh for the real-life language that could most convincingly stand in for Martian in a movie, but I'll go with Nahuatl every time. Ye gods, what a language.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's that weird 'tl' ligature that's all through the thing that causes the most tongue destruction, I think - sometimes (q.v. huitlacoche) it's close enough to a syllable break you can sorta deal with it that way, but other times (q.v. Tenochtitlan or Tlaloc) it's a bit harder to handle - and sometimes (q.v. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli) it's just -what-

Still, xocolatl is a wonderful thing and they pretty much originated it, so even though we horribly bastardize both the name and recipe to 'chocolate' I'm happy to recognize their essential contribution.

Edit: Damnit, one of these days I -will- remember that I can't use square brackets here.

You can, but you have to use ampersand entities for them. DCF renders (amper)l; as the left one, [ and (amper)r; as the right one, ].

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Rimmer: "Open communication channels, Lister. Broadcast on all known frequencies and in all known languages, including Welsh."

There is also the Welsh ll, which at least some of the time is pronounced like the tlh in tlh'Ingan.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yup! Of course, I'm a bit of a bastard and put a "trap" in there. Cirencester? Is pronounced "Cirencester". For some reason. It's the only such name that is pronounced as spelled.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

I just had to.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"