Lee-bruh or Lee-bray?

[Northerner]

I can still tell which town folk come from in Lancashire from their accent. Professor Brian Cox has a barely tamed Oldham accent, if you listen carefully. He uses the glottal stop instead of t even before a word starting with a vowel when talking casually.

Bolton has to be the easiest 🙂 A lot of my relatives on my Mum's side come from Todmorden, which is quite Rochdale in accent 🙂 I've often wondered if Shipman did for any of them 😱

 

[KookyCat]

In parts of Lancashire, particularly in Burnley and down Rossendale Valley, and round Chorley and Wigan way, the letter R is heavily emphasised, so the final E in Libre gets lost in that, so it’s not so much flat vowels, more elided vowels, almost unvoiced. Where do you fit in?

I can still tell which town folk come from in Lancashire from their accent. Professor Brian Cox has a barely tamed Oldham accent, if you listen carefully. He uses the glottal stop instead of t even before a word starting with a vowel when talking casually.

I’m a Bolton/Chorley, currently Bolton, I love the R inflection particularly those from the Blackburn areas. My accent isn’t that strong to be fair because I moved around a lot as a youngster but clearly strong enough because a chap in New York approached me in an art gallery and asked if I was a Boltonian 😱. Once I’d registered that he wasn’t a stalker we had a nice chat, he was originally a Horwich lad

 

[KookyCat]

Bolton has to be the easiest 🙂 A lot of my relatives on my Mum's side come from Todmorden, which is quite Rochdale in accent 🙂 I've often wondered if Shipman did for any of them 😱

We have a little cluster of Woolies in Todi maybe we’re related I should point out I’m not a sheep, that’s my maternal Grandad’s name 😛

 

[Carlos]

I am a bit confused about the references to Spanish and the pronunciation of libre as librey or libray. In Spanish libre means free, and the pronunciation of the vowels is for the i as in pit or sit, for the e as in test, the stress goes in the i, here is a good example

 

[Bloden]

Libre is Latin not English French or Spanish.

It means 'pounds' LOL

It is a Spanish word @trophywench - ‘libre’ means ‘free’ (as in ‘as a bird’) in Spanish.

I often say Leebray (the Spanish pronunciation) cos I was living in Spain when I first had the device, but try to remember to say Leebruh cos otherwise my DSN doesn’t know what I’m on about!🙄

 

[trophywench]

It is a Spanish word @trophywench - ‘libre’ means ‘free’ (as in ‘as a bird’) in Spanish.

I often say Leebray (the Spanish pronunciation) cos I was living in Spain when I first had the device, but try to remember to say Leebruh cos otherwise my DSN doesn’t know what I’m on about!🙄

Well yes cos librA means pounds in Espana - as in Libras Esterlinas. I knew that already LOL. Since it's hardly a matter of life or death in this instance it was just a lighthearted attempt to imbue seriousness by chucking Latin into the mix!

 

[trophywench]

My beloved husband has just stated that we should have asked him since he's a 'sly' linguist - and he answered 'Dos cervezas por favor'.

That does solve a lot of problems usually!

 

[Northerner]

Clearly it would save a lot of confusion if they had simply called it the 'Stan' or the 'Nelly' 🙂 Or perhaps, just the 'Free'? I'd also like to mention that, born on October 18th, I am a Lee-br-uhn, not a Lee-bran 😉

 

[mikeyB]

They wouldn’t call it the Free, because that’s Old English from the proto Germanic, Frei, and the Danish vrij. Libre is from the Latin, which is much more civilised than the Northern Hordes, and recognised worldwide.

On the subject of Latin, I see that Finland radio has just stopped broadcasting an edition of the news in Latin, which they have done for 30 years, working on the theory that nobody can speak Finnish, but those of us with a working knowledge of Latin can understand. In classical Rome, folk managed to communicate with just 18 letters in the alphabet, every single one of which was pronounced the same wherever it came in the word, so it was easy to learn.