Used to assume bergamot was a French word or something. Never said it out loud until someone at work gave me some extra Earl Grey tea they didn’t want and someone else asked me what’s in it, and I said bergamot the way i’ve always said it in my head, like ‘berjamo’.
Then I had some self doubt and looked it up and realised it’s just pronounced how it’s written. I feel like inventing a fancy pronunciation for a completely phonetic word is more embarrassing than the other way around.
I had that from an actual chimney sweep the other day, it’s your job dude, get it right! Imagine going to a dentist and they kept talking to you about your jeeth
Idk. Pretty sure they know its not the right way to say it. It’s just one of them things innit, preserving their identity/class/roots through language.
I hadn’t really thought about it like that, obviously there’s dialect/slang and different pronunciations everywhere, but using a slightly different version of a word as part of an accent wasn’t something I’d considered. Guess it’s a little bit like people from Worcester where I grew up saying ‘where ams you’ rather than ‘where are you’? The sort of stuff my mum would constantly harangue me about not saying so that I wouldn’t sound ‘common’