How to pronounce Worcestershire Sauce

“You, sir, are a Fiend.”
“‘ffiend’, corrected Sir Jasper, automatically.”

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I guess that’s a Welsh name, so taken with the logic of w pronounced as “oo” and dd as “th”, I’m going with ff pronounced as “thfsk”.

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I was thinking that a Bertie Wooster clip featuring Hugh Laurie might have been more appropriate than a Blackadder.

Maybe he should have a lil’ drink beforehand to improve his diction:

Bingo. It’s like how adding a little bit of Asian fish sauce to a curry improves it but doesn’t necessarily make it taste fishy.

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Is that really what it’s called in Spanish-speaking countries? How do you avoid getting HP?

Seriously, I’d really like to know how to avoid getting HP sauce.

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I think this thread would be better served as a discussion on “weird things the British eat”. We’d be at it for weeks.

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Needing to pronounce Worcestershire correctly was actually a plot device in an old episode of Scooby Doo.

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We have this awful tendency to pronounce every ‘r’ and to not pronounce any that aren’t there, making the rhyme simply impossible.

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“I’m Barnaby Bennet, and I have an idea,
From now on, RED is all that I’ll wear.”

Yeah, we’re getting a few dialect variants in Southern Ontario, but that one only rhymes in my wife’s native Kiwi. :grinning: The computer guy in me despairs at the ambiguity, but the language guy in me loves the variation; English is good fun. Esperanto, anyone? :smile:

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I’ve no idea, I just read it on Wikipedia.

But I was amused (and vicariously flattered) that it’s so popular in El Salvador that it’s a standard condiment on restaurant tables.

And what’s wrong with HP?

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Lester Mapledurham (pronounced “Mum”).

Incidentally, Wodehouse always pointed out that his name rhymes with “good house”, not “road house”.

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Challenge accepted!

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There’s a different way to spell vitamins?

Worst-er-shur? (At least that’s how I’ve always pronounced it.)

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That’s actually incredible. It’s like I can hear the rhyme when I imagine it being said by a New Zealander, but if I try to say it there’s just no way.

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worster - that is all

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Fun fact: “ff” in Welsh is just pronounced like the English “f”, while a single “f” in Welsh is pronounced as a “v”.

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I love Wales. It’s a beautiful country and I’m a big fan of Y Gwyll.

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How on earth do New Zealanders pronounce “Ikea”?

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That is the accepted pronunciation. Well, I’d transliterate it “wuss-ter”

Misguided people insisting on other ways of saying it are wrong. That is all.

Not very often seems to be the answer:

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