Jak Mluvit o Fotbale v Anglictine – Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham

How to avoid sounding like a football novice
jak mluvit o fotbal v anglictine
Be Cleverer Than These Two

How to pronounce English football team names properly (jak mluvit o fotbale v anglictine). A quick guide to not sounding stupid in the pub. I bet you think you know how to say Chelsea, right? What about Aresenal and Tottenham? Easy? Read on…

Instead of trying to read the letters you see in the English spelling, try to pronounce what you see from the Czech spelling (including some phonetics). I have also added an audio file for each club name so you can hear how a native (northern British, English, Yorkshire – West, Leeds – North Western) speaker says it.

Arsenal

ásnl – We don’t pronounce the e or the a at the end.

Bournemouth

boónməth – Some people may say the mouth part like the word mouth but most of us replace the vowels ou with the short schwa sound ə.

Brighton & Hove Albion

brajnənhouvalbýən – To be honest most people just call them Brighton so you don’t need to learn the whole name (only f you want to sound really clever). Some people, those who have better (more standard) pronunciation will say the letter T in the middle but in my accent and for many others, we drop the T but leave a glottal stop.

Burnley

bɜnli – The schwaa sound that replaces the UR is the long version. It sounds like the noise we make in English urrgh when in Czech you say fuj (something is disgusting).

Chelsea

čelsi – The most common error I hear is people pronouncing the S as a Z. It should be pronounced as an S.

Crystal Palace

kristəlpaləs – Again, change the letter A at the back of both words to a short schwa.

Everton

evətən – As with Brighton, the T in the middle is optional but remember to replace it with a glottal stop if you omit it.

Huddersfield Town

hudəzfíltawn – Many speakers with my accent (West Yorkshire) would actually drop the H from the beginning and as well as the D from the end of HuddersfielD and as Huddersfield is also in West Yorkshire, you’ll sound like a real local if you pronounce it this way.

Leicester City

lestəsiti – Or just lestə. A perfect example of the letters in the word being more confusing than helpful.

Liverpool

livəpůl – Try to take out your rolled R from the middle and replace with a schwa. Also, the double O is a long sound like in the word ZOO not short as in look.

Manchester City

mančestəsiti – Not so hard but do try to replace the rolled R at the end of Manchester with a schwa.Or just simply ‘site’ to their local supporters.

Manchester United

mančestəjůnajtid –  Or just simply jənajtid (optional T/glottal stop) to their northern born supporters. With united you can also pronounce it jənajtəd.

Newcastle United

ňůkasljůnajtid – The N in Newcastle is said more like an ň or nj, something called an intrusive j sound. It’s the sound of a letter that we don’t write. It’s the same sound you make when saying words like, you, universtity and Europe. (Jolanda and Jachim)

Southampton

sawthamptən – The OU part of SOUTH is said in the same way as when we hurt ourselves and say OW!  (cow, coward).

Stoke City

stouksiti – This has been the most difficult one for me to work out how to pronounce using Czech sounds so listen carefully.

Swansea City

swonzisiti – Ok, so the word SEA is a soft S sound and yes, it looks the same as in ChelSEA but here it IS pronounced like a Z.

Tottenham Hotspur

totnəmhotspɜ – This club has the unfortunate title of ‘Most Overpronounced Football Club Name in the World’. You do not need to pronounce every letter you see, if you do you will sound quite ridiculous. To sound more like a native, remove the E from the middle of the word, don’t pronounce the H in the first word and if you REALLY want to sound good, replace the TT with a simple glottal stop. If this is all a bit much for you, try calling them just  SPURS (spɜz).

Watford

wotfəd – Simply right? Optional T, replace with glottal stop, the A sounds like an O and the OR becomes a schwa.

West Bromwich Albion

wesbromičalbíjən – NEVER EVER, I repeat, EVER pronounce the W in BromWich, the same can be said for Norwich City or Harwich. However, you do say it in Northwich Victoria (8th level of English football league system). Also drop the T from WesT.

West Ham United

westhamjůnajtid – Here we do pronounce the T in West but sometimes drop the H from Ham to make Westam.

And so to the end of this piece on how to pronounce English football club (Premier League) names. The final recording is a reading of the English Premier League results from the weekend of Fri-Sun 24-26th November 2017. You can hear how I naturally read them. Note, this is slightly different to how I would pronounce them when I talk. During this reading, my pronuncation is more of an attempt at a BBC standard.

Here are the English Premier League fixtures for the weekend of December 2nd 2017. My  challenge for you is to see if you can pronounce the names a little beter than before. If you’re feeling really brave, make a recording of yourself and send it to me :-). Remember I love to read your comments so please, post them below.  If you want more help with pronunciation, take my free video course.

Richard.

  • Chelsea v Newcastle
  • Brighton v Liverpool
  • Everton v Huddersfield
  • Leicester v Burnley
  • Stoke v Swansea
  • Watford v Tottenham
  • West Brom v Crystal Palace
  • Arsenal v Man Utd
  • AFC Bournemouth v Southampton
  • Manchester City v West Ham United

 

Where’s My Television?

Me and my big ideas!  I have long been extolling the virtues (saying how good something is) of a TV-free home (not having a TV) and often suggested to my family the idea of removing the television from our house.

Click here for a vocabulary list of the words and phrases in bold.

I’m sure the benefits are obvious to most of you; more quality time spent with your family, more meaningful conversations, less distractions and increased ability to concentrate etc. It was with all this in mind that last week I again made the suggestion that we could try a week without television as an experiment.  No Minimax corrupting my children’s brains with adverts for plastic crap they really don’t need, no Ordinace v Ružové Zahradě killing my wife’s brain cells with its mindnumbingly boring stories and personally less time wasted pretending I’m learning something by watching repeated episodes of TimeTeam on the History channel and bike races from Azerbaijan I have no real interest in on Eurosport.

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kid in front of tv

In English we use the word programme to mean a show ie. The Simpsons, Československo Má Talent. When you program in Czech we say channel eg. Nova Cinema, CT1, Prima Cool. Česká Televize is a TV station.  In short:

  • A TV Station broadcasts the shows and it may have more than one channel.
  • A TV Channel is the frequency being used.
  • A serial is a programme with one story split into many episodes.
  • An episode is díl in Czech.
  • A TV series has the same characters every week but different plots (stories).
  • A season is a collection of episodes.

BBC-Logo

So, as an example; the BBC is a station, BBC1 is a channel, Lost is a serial and Lost has six seasons. The Big Bang Theory is a series and in season 9 there were 24 episodes. Got that? (Do you understand?)

Anyway, back to the case in point and two days ago Radka said to me “OK!, Yes, let’s do it.” So, we decided to remove the TV from the living room the following day (yesterday).  It was then that I realised my mistake…

tv football

I love football, it’s one of my main interests; I play it, I go to stadiums and most importantly for this blog post, I watch it on TV. Those of you who are football fans will already see my error.  Starting today is the European Championships in France. Usually, for these big tournaments (the Euros and World Cup) I watch every game, not just the England and Czech Republic games.  So what am I to do now?  Our gogglebox is hidden away at my request and with it the chance to watch the best footballers in Europe fight it out for the title of Champions of Europe. I can’t believe I didn’t think this through properly.

Does anyone want to invite me to their house to watch a game?

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