This was published 1 year ago
Eight Australian places we keep pronouncing incorrectly
By Ben Groundwater
A sea cave near Murrays Beach, Jervis Bay.Credit: Jordan Robins/Destination NSW
I'm going to cop some heat for this one. I can feel it. People tend to get very attached to the name of the place they live, or where they're from.
I've also had past experiences of saying the following words in what I perceive as the correct way and then being re-corrected by the people who live there. It's been very awkward.
And who can even say what correct pronunciation is? If it's been several hundred years of saying a word a certain way, does that just make it the right way now?
Anyway, all that aside, whenever I travel Australia and visit the following places, or hear a local talk about them, there's always a slight flinch. A grimace. You're saying it wrong.
Albany, WA
Credit: William Marwick/Tourism WA
You will find a lot of the place names listed here are taken from the UK, where there's an accepted way of saying a word that we in Australia have tended to ignore. Case in point: Albany, in Western Australia. Going by the British convention – the one we've followed for Albury NSW, pronounced "awl-burr-ee", and that the Americans have followed in Albany, New York – this city should be pronounced "awl-ban-ee". And yet people there insist on calling it "al-ban-ee".
Mount Kosciuszko, NSW
Credit: Thredbo
Grab the nearest Polish person and show them this word: Kosciuszko. Ask them to say it out loud. Do you really think it will sound like "Kossy-osk-oh"? Definitely not. Mt Kosciuszko was named by Polish mountaineer Pawel Strzelecki in honour of Polish-Lithuanian military leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko, which means it has a correct Polish pronunciation, and you guessed it, we're miles off. The name of our country's highest peak is actually Mt "Kos-choos-ko".
Lachlan, Tasmania
There are only about 800 people who call this small Tassie township home, so I'll probably avoid the pitchforks here. Still, if you call through Lachlan, along the beautiful Derwent Valley, and you pronounce the name the way you normally would the Anglicised Gaelic name we're familiar with – that is, "lock-lun", apparently meaning "warrior from the land of the lochs" – you'll get a few strange looks. Because this town is called "lack-lun". Which, let's be honest, is wrong.
Exmouth, WA
Turquoise Bay, Exmouth.Credit: Tourism WA
There's an established convention for the pronunciation of towns that sit at the mouths of rivers in the UK. Think of Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Falmouth and so on. They're not pronounced like the body part. It's not "Ports-mowth". It's shortened slightly to "Ports-muth". In the same way it is for Exmouth ("Ex-muth") on the River Exe in Devon. The coastal West Australian town of the same name (so called after Exmouth Gulf, which in turn was named after Edward Pellew, the 1st Viscount Exmouth), therefore, should obviously be pronounced "Ex-muth". Except it's not. Locals insist on "Ex-mowth".
Reservoir, Victoria
There's some conjecture here. I don't live in Melbourne, so I can't say this with absolute confidence. Though it appears that there are at least some people who say the Melbourne suburb Reservoir – a word with a widely accepted pronunciation, particularly in, um, France – as "res-er-vor". Which is weird. Why would you drop the "wah"? It makes your suburb sound so much more chic and sexy…
Jervis Bay, NSW
This could get ugly, because apparently everyone from Sydney says that it's "Jar-vis" Bay, while everyone who actually lives there calls it "Jer-vis" Bay. Who's correct? Well, the people from Sydney obviously. Once again there's a convention for these sorts of words in the UK, in the likes of Derby (we'll get back to that), Berkshire ("bark-shuh"), and no doubt plenty more. So it should be "Jar-vis". Except… The bay was named after Admiral John Jervis, and apparently his descendants pronounce their name "Jer-vis". So. Could everyone be right? And wrong?
Campania, Tasmania
Any Italophiles visiting Tasmania will get a shock when they visit Campania, just outside Hobart, and start referring to it with a flourish as "Cam-pun-ya". Because locals don't say it like they do in Italy. Here, it's "Cam-pain-ee-a". The town was named in 1829 by Francis Smith, who was granted land and called it Campania Estate. Did he have Italy in mind, in this region where wine was already being produced? Honestly, I don't know, but it still feels like this should be "Cam-pun-ya".
Derby, WA
Go to the city in England and you will find it's called "Dar-bee". That city will be in a county called "dar-bee-shuh" (Derbyshire). Play a football game between two geographically close teams and it will be called a "dar-bee". And yet in Derby, the small town in the Kimberley in Western Australia, it's "Der-bee". Like demolition derby. Which is wrong. Right?
Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au
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