pron of Worcester, MA

[Alison Murie]

Pronouncing /c/ as "ch"  doesn't necessarily imply the mistaken
insertion of an /h/, since we have a number of words borrowed from
Italian that exhibit this feature, as does church Latin (influenced, I
suppose, by Italian).  BTW, I've known a number of people who give
"Worcestershire" a full-blown five-syllable pronunciation:
"Worchestershyer Sauce."
AM
~~~~~~~~~~~
On Feb 26, 2009, at 11:43 PM, James Harbeck wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: pron of Worcester, MA
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As a slight digression, the thing I always found most interesting
> about Worcester when I lived in Boston was not its pronunciation --
> which I was used to from Worcestershire sauce -- but the fact that it
> was common for people to explain, "It's spelled Worchester but
> pronounced Wista." Not "Wor-cest-er" but "Wor-chest-er." Quite a lot
> of people seemed to have the definite idea that there was an h after
> the c. Similar, I imagine, to the common idea in Toronto that there's
> a g after then n in Eglinton.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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