You now how some early English scripts wrote s to look like f? Hermione Baddeley was appearing in a revue which included "A Reftoration Play", a sketch in which the actors pronounced all the esses as effs. According to Sheila Hancock, Ms. Baddeley had to be physically restrained from going back on stage to perform "Where the bee sucks, there suck I".
There are villages in the Norfolk Broads area named Reepham and Deepham ... to me it seems obvious that they're Anglo Saxon place names referring to a place where reeds were reaped and and where the water was deep. However they're pronounced with the Greek 'ph' so they're Reefam and Deefam which just would not have been the case ... I blame Classically educated Victorian parsons
However, there's a village nearby called Hautbois ... presumably French but I've not fathomed why ... but it is pronounced in Norfolk as Obbis ................ where does that come from?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Hautbois is the French name for the musical instrument we call an oboe. Where I used to live in Sussex there is a village called Slaugham, pronounced Slaffam, and Hellingly and Ardingly, where the final y is pronounced to rhyme with pie. It's a Shibboleth, a device to distinguish the locals from the outsiders.
Yes, why name a village after an oboe? I used to work at an Early Music centre in Norfolk and it was a regular 'interesting fact' for us to tell visiting musicians ... but no one seems to know why?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
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However, there's a village nearby called Hautbois ... presumably French but I've not fathomed why ... but it is pronounced in Norfolk as Obbis ................ where does that come from?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Fire it's claa-am and St Reatham.
And Surrey Docks is now pronounced Surrey Quays.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.