How does one correctly pronounce Worcestershire Sauce? Wiki failed me in this one, claiming it's pronounced /ˈwʊstəʃər/
This doesn't help me. Can you?
A: I've always pronounced Worcestershire "WOOSE te sher". I have a sneaking suspicion that the British might even break it down to "WOOSE ter".
"Why", you might ask, "do they insist on all the extra letters, then?" I don't really know, but my guess is that it was a ploy by the Saxons to throw off William the Conqueror and his invading army in 1066. It didn't work, and the steak sauce fell into the hands of the Normans.
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2 comments:
Good answer Doug. I've added "educated guesses" as a 'label'.
Incidentally, there was a lot of extra crap in Old English that we lost along the way, or we would have to deal with this sort of thing all the time. We can thank the Viking invaders for the bulk of that simplification. Apparently, when they learned English, after settling in the towns they had previously pillaged, they decided that pure Old English sounded "pompous and faggy". So they whittled it down to the grunts and profanity we have today.
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