Llanfairpwllgwyngyll​gogerychwyrndrob​wllllantysiliogogogoch
September 10, 2015 9:45 PM   Subscribe

Weatherman pronounces the city of "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll​gogerychwyrndrob​wllllantysiliogogogoch" flawlessly on live TV.
posted by SpacemanStix (85 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Link is bollixed.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:49 PM on September 10, 2015


Link works for me, and if assuming they aren't just pulling a gullible Americans leg (". . .sili-a-go-go", really?) it is truly worth seeing.
posted by mark k at 11:00 PM on September 10, 2015


Original YT link (may be region-blocked).
posted by maudlin at 11:01 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Guys behind the cameras bet him a tenner he couldn't do it.

Cymru am byth!
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:04 PM on September 10, 2015 [8 favorites]


It's a real place, yes.
posted by jaduncan at 11:19 PM on September 10, 2015


After he nails it, he does just a little tiny bounce and just a hint of a grin. It's not quite smugness, more like taking genuine pride in his work. It's the TV newscaster equivalent of a craftsman carving an elegant flourish into the handle of a spoon.
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:25 PM on September 10, 2015 [49 favorites]


supercalifragiligogogogoch
posted by not_on_display at 11:25 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


and here is Naomi Watts pronouncing it handily on Jimmy Kimmel's show

The wiki page for the town is pretty thorough for such a small place.
posted by numaner at 11:27 PM on September 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


You can also do this if you're a master of the Welsh martial art Llap-Goch.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:29 PM on September 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


I'm waiting for someone to admit the Welsh language is a thousand plus year old practical joke.on the rest of us. Look, he's kind of got a little smirk going on.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:39 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Well this place name is a 150 year old practical joke. Or promotional tool, depending on your point of view.
posted by merlynkline at 11:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [16 favorites]


But what really helped him nail the line (in one take, for the record) is the fact that he was born in the Welsh city of Cardiff and educated at the University of Wales.

Local man speaks local language, weather at 11.
posted by chavenet at 11:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [35 favorites]


That's easy for you to say.
posted by y2karl at 11:49 PM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Local man speaks local language, weather at 11.

But it isn't quite that simple. They ran all the words in the place name together to make it more exotic. So Localmanspeakslocallanguage,weatherat11 seems a bit fairer.
posted by merlynkline at 11:52 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle- dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser- kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle- gerspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönedanker-kalbsfleisch- mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:56 PM on September 10, 2015 [15 favorites]


Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim Bus Stop F'tang F'tang Ole Biscuitbarrel (silly).
posted by The Tensor at 12:02 AM on September 11, 2015 [13 favorites]


But pronounced "Throat-Warbler Mangrove".
posted by Palindromedary at 12:14 AM on September 11, 2015 [21 favorites]


Did Fiona Apple name this town?
posted by DrAmerica at 12:37 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


'City'?. Ahem. No.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:37 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, if we're going to get silly with languages
(with English subtitles here)
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:48 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


That should be Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, not Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob-wllllantysiliogogogoch (i.e. there’s no hyphen in the name): could one of the mods correct it?
posted by misteraitch at 1:01 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


If you can sing it you can say it. Worked for me.
posted by flabdablet at 1:13 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Local man speaks local language, weather at 11.

Yeah, this more or less sums it up. A Welshman, possibly a Welsh speaker, can pronounce even long words constructed out of Welsh phonemes? Heavens!
posted by Dysk at 1:25 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Local man speaks local language, weather at 11.

In one take, very quickly, under hot lights with a camera in his face, and saying a 53-character compound word made up of a whole bunch of different words? Yup, still impressed. You try going on TV and saying the trickiest word you know without messing up.
posted by mirepoix at 1:29 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]


Also, I'm American and there are dozens of American place names I have trouble with. Someone told me how to pronounce "Puyallup" once but right now I have no idea.
posted by mirepoix at 1:31 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Reminds me of "humuhumunukunukuapua'a (One take.)"
posted by wwwwolf at 1:32 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, but if it was your job to say it live on air, you'd probably be reminded (and remind yourself, maybe even practice a wee bit) in the minutes running up to your camera going live. Could you pronounce 'Puyallup' with preparation time and practice?
posted by Dysk at 1:32 AM on September 11, 2015


Probably, but Puyallup isn't Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob-wllllantysiliogogogoch. I still say it's impressive that he nailed it, when a surprisingly large number of people on TV news cannot speak in front of a camera without flubbing even simple lines. (Seriously, watch old broadcasts of Sue Simmons sometime.)
posted by mirepoix at 1:36 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I guess coming from a language background where compound words, even incredibly long compound words, are commonplace and entirely unremarkable, it just doesn't seem that impressive.

Put it another way, if you can speak long sentences without error, why is it really that different if they're rendered without spaces when written? Fundamentally, it's the same thing.
posted by Dysk at 1:41 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by mirepoix at 1:44 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Welsh doesn't generally make compound words like that though. OTOH this particular place name is well known, being as ridiculous as it is, and I'd guess most Welsh speakers will have practiced saying at at some point, like English speaking kids trying to say (or spell) supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or antidisestablishmentarianism.

Speaking long sentences without error is more difficult than you think, I suspect. Most people can speak long sentences without *apparent* error but most sentences allow for some variation in their rendering without impacting meaning, and you can get away with quite a bit of umming and erring. This particular long sentence has to be said exactly as written and without hesitation.

All that said, I wouldn't want to try any of those words in front of a camera. But then again that's not my job.
posted by merlynkline at 2:05 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Although, yes a local man is saying a local place name without error, the town is usually referred to (even by locals as) Llanfairpwll or Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Llanfair PG if they're feeling like they want to use their English. It's pretty impressive.

This is similar to Thais, who refer to the capital of Thailand as "Krung Thep" (City of Angels), or at a stretch "Krung Thep Mahanakhon". However, the official (transcribed) ceremonial name is: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit. You can thank King Rama IV for this, though few people can pronounce it from memory.

I remember a journey from Dublin to London via Holyhead a long while ago. A friend of mine was driving, he was helping me move house and my brain was a bit fried. We stopped at a petrol station by the side of the road to get some food before we left Anglesea. I looked up and saw this (Street View). It took me a minute to realise where we were. See? My brain was fried. It was pleasing to me that we'd found "The place with the crazy long tourist name!" without meaning to.
posted by sarcas at 2:06 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's impressive, especially on live telly. Also 89% of people in Cardiff have no knowledge of Welsh at all, there being a huge difference between North Wales and the more anglicised South.

It's a beautiful language currently facing quite severe demographic problems.
posted by brilliantmistake at 2:17 AM on September 11, 2015 [9 favorites]


QUIT trying to summon Cthulhu!
posted by Captain l'escalier at 2:39 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Well done, but itreallyisn'tallthatfuckinghardifyoualreadyspeakthefuckinglanguageandpracticeabit. He speaks Welsh fluently. He's a professional television presenter. It's well-known as the longest geographical name in the UK. He's a Welshman who majored in geography at university. He's pronouncing (and probably has carefully memorized) a long string of concatenated Welsh words that have real meaning individually and collectively. It would be strange if he couldn't pronounce it.
posted by pracowity at 2:50 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


He's hoping now that there's no extraordinary weather in Pontrhydfendigaid or Rhosllannerchrugog.
posted by Prince Lazy I at 2:51 AM on September 11, 2015


I met a guy from there at a university reunion dinner of all things... said you only use the full monty name when you want to annoy people asking for your address (like the university authorities). Ordinarily you just use the shortened version or the nearby town.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:58 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yes, its not a given that some one from Cardiff is a fluent welsh speaker at all.
posted by Helga-woo at 3:29 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


A friend of ours with Welsh parents is often asked to pronounce this at parties because he does it so effortlessly.
posted by Kitteh at 3:29 AM on September 11, 2015


(1) It's really cool, and I smiled.
(2) He looks great doing it, because he KNOWS it's cool, and doesn't make a big thing, but STILL.
(3) Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is 34 characters, supercalifragilisticexpialidocioussupercalifragilisticexpialidocious is 68 characters, and I have no problem saying either because (A) I've practised (B) it's my native language.
(4) So it's not totally AMAZING HE CAN EVEN DO IT, WELSH IS SO AMAZINGLY HARD!
(5) But see (1) and (2).
posted by alasdair at 3:34 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


The only Welsh I know is microwave = popty ping
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:54 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


Fiona Bruce also seemed to do a good job with it on the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday, which was filmed at a stately home thereabouts.

Learning how to say it was a thing when we were kids. I've no idea why.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:07 AM on September 11, 2015


I am with alasdair, this was fun and charming, but not shocking. I couldn't have said nordöstersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulator before, but I could easily now. I could even say nordöstersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten if I didn't run up of breath half way through.
posted by Iteki at 4:57 AM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


If anyone else was wondering, it means "Saint Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio of the red cave".
posted by kyrademon at 5:08 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]


Antidisestablishmentarianism!
posted by echocollate at 5:26 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


You can always move to the neighboring, much shorter-named, town of flagitandmoveononoch if you don't like it.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:27 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


So there is also the world's longest single word place name Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu

Which I've heard said correctly, and translated to English means:
The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.

For other super fun tongue twister names see this list.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:28 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


My favorite band ever, Eddie From Ohio, has a song called Going Back To Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The only recording I could find is on Archive.org. It's track 6 on the link. Listen to the end of the previous track for an explanation.

Written by their bass player, Michael Clem, known for his humorous songs, he not only pronounces the name somewhat correctly, but he manages to rhyme it as well.

It made for a nice sing-along.
posted by bondcliff at 5:38 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


You can thank King Rama IV for this, though few people can pronounce it from memory.

The Wikipedia claimed that Thai schoolchildren learned to sing a song that had the whole name it and could do it like the Alphabet Song. Is that not true? I found that charming and want it to be true.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:40 AM on September 11, 2015


Well done, but itreallyisn'tallthatfuckinghardifyoualreadyspeakthefuckinglanguageandpracticeabit. He speaks Welsh fluently. He's a professional television presenter. It's well-known as the longest geographical name in the UK. He's a Welshman who majored in geography at university. He's pronouncing (and probably has carefully memorized) a long string of concatenated Welsh words that have real meaning individually and collectively. It would be strange if he couldn't pronounce it.

Let me guess: You're the kind of person who watches a gold-medal gymnastics performance, rolls their eyes, and says, "Well, sure, anybody could do that if they committed years of strenuous training towards the single-minded mastery of their craft."
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:41 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]


Perhaps the key is that he is one of many thousands of people who speak Welsh fluently and think nothing of it. The same cannot be said of gold-medal gymnasts, I suspect.

It's still great though :)
posted by merlynkline at 5:45 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


According to David Barnes' 2005 book The Companion Guide to Wales, the village was originally named Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. It was renamed in the 19th century in order to earn a Guinness World record for the longest railway station name in the U.K.

Seeing as the Guinness World Records only got started in the 50s this factoid is truthy but dubious. Perhaps there was a precursor back then - the Mead Book of Records?
posted by Flashman at 5:55 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


They have a passport stamp there, I took the ferry from Ireland and you do not need a stamp there, but you can get one for fun.
posted by vrakatar at 5:56 AM on September 11, 2015


That's not a long place name. This is a long place name. (The longest, actually)
posted by arzakh at 6:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]




Bet he can't pronounce that Icelandic volcano's name though.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:58 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


the closed captioning of the town name, I could probably pronounce.

If you're expecting English Welsh will definitely sound like critical mechanical problems.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:01 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


Seeing as the Guinness World Records only got started in the 50s this factoid is truthy but dubious.

Wikipedia says it was renamed from just Llanfairpwllgwyngyll in the 1860s as a stunt to have the longest name of any British railway stop, but I can also make Wikipedia briefly claim that it was named by Martian invaders so whatever.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:16 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


The only Welsh I know is microwave = popty ping
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 19:54 on September 11


…which literally means "oven that goes 'ping'"
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:43 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Like English speakers of a certain age who learned "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,"† I suspect most native Welsh speakers picked it up on a lark. I worked with a woman who was born in Wales and who has lived in the US for the last thirty-odd years. When I saw an article about the name I asked her if she could pronounce it and she rattled it off without hesitation.

Also, "Eyjafjallajökull" isn't too bad once you realize the tricky bit is the double-L, which is pronounced like "TL."

   EYA-FYAT-LA-YO-KUTL



†and "antidisestablishmentarianism"‡


‡and, in my case, "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" because, well, just because
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:46 AM on September 11, 2015


Liam Dutton is a cool guy. This does nothing to dissuade me of that fact. I love how Channel 4 news feels like comedy compared to Fox or Sky News
posted by trif at 7:57 AM on September 11, 2015


Written by their bass player, Michael Clem, known for his humorous songs, he not only pronounces the name somewhat correctly, but he manages to rhyme it as well.

This to me is a more impressive achievement than discovering Welshman Speaks Welsh.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:15 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have little to say here other than GO SWANS!
posted by Navelgazer at 8:17 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


A Klingon would have trouble saying this.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:21 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Say what you like about Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, at least it appears to follow the orthography of its language. Unlike those various English names that commit grave violence against the Roman alphabet like Featherstonhaugh or Magdalen or the commonplace Worcester(shire).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:21 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Stop trying to make Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch happen!
posted by Cookiebastard at 8:31 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Jeff Douglas from As It Happens (definitely not Welsh, not Welsh-speaking) managed it a few years ago, and they re-ran the segment on Wednesday. Check the podcast version.
posted by Kreiger at 8:44 AM on September 11, 2015


Say what you like about Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, at least it appears to follow the orthography of its language. Unlike those various English names that commit grave violence against the Roman alphabet like Featherstonhaugh or Magdalen or the commonplace Worcester(shire).

Even just sticking to place names, the classic example is Loughborough (pronounced 'luff-bruh')
posted by Dysk at 8:47 AM on September 11, 2015


Even just sticking to place names, the classic example is Loughborough (pronounced 'luff-bruh')

Some friends of mine and I used to pronounce Loughborough Junction in London as if it was somewhere in the Australian Outback, i.e. LoogaBarooga. Always made the execrable Thameslink journeys a little funnier.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:59 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


A Welshman, possibly a Welsh speaker, can pronounce even long words constructed out of Welsh phonemes? Heavens!

I don't understand how speaking the language and being familiar with the word is assumed to be a foolproof bulwark against getting tongue-tied when on the spot. Part of my job is regularly getting up in front of coworkers and talking about a process in our office called "reverification" and it fucks me up almost every time.
posted by psoas at 9:13 AM on September 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


"Cellular" usually trips me up.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:18 AM on September 11, 2015


Also 89% of people in Cardiff have no knowledge of Welsh at all

On the other hand it has more native speakers of Gallifreyan than anywhere else.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:35 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Welsh medium education is becoming more popular in Wales, even for families where the parents don't speak Welsh, and English is spoken at home. The wikipedia article gives some interesting numbers. Twenty five per cent of primary school pupils (and twenty per cent of secondary school students) in Wales are now in Welsh medium schools. It's very popular with middle class parents where, for example in Cardiff, there is a perception that the Welsh medium schools are academically stronger (some info here).

Although, all kids in school in Wales learn Welsh and probably spend some time perfecting the pronunciation of this flamboyantly-named place. Not everyone can do it without stumbling though, I'm sure.
posted by cushie at 10:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I did a year of school in Wales and even in Grade Two we had pretty intensive Welsh-language instruction. Don't think they sprung Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch on us at that age, but I did learn how to pronounce places like Machynlleth.

Jeff Douglas from As It Happens (definitely not Welsh, not Welsh-speaking) managed it a few years ago

This must have taken him a lot of practice, because ordinarily Jeff Douglas can't make it through a normal English sentence without some sort of flub or mispronunciation. And when he is tasked with a foreign place to read (say, Dusseldorf, or even someplace familiar like Gatineau) he invariably overeggs it and uses a hammy approximation of a local accent.
posted by Flashman at 10:45 AM on September 11, 2015


Even just sticking to place names, the classic example is Loughborough (pronounced 'luff-bruh')

It's only pronounced Lufbra by the locals, and the students, in imitation. Its proper pronunciation is loveborough.

Leicester is even better. (it's pronounced Lesta.)
posted by marienbad at 10:46 AM on September 11, 2015


Wikipedia says it was renamed from just Llanfairpwllgwyngyll in the 1860s as a stunt to have the longest name of any British railway stop, but I can also make Wikipedia briefly claim that it was named by Martian invaders so whatever.

This is the story I heard when I was there a couple years ago, and that the real purpose of the stunt was to attract tourists. 150 years of being a cheesy tourist gimmick seemed kind of adorable, while still being cheesy. I was visiting some friends who lived on Anglesey and it was clear that they felt somehow obligated to take me there, presumably because it was so close. It's just an hour drive from an underground trampoline park which is way more interesting.

There's a hill in New Zealand with a longer name, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu, but I haven't been there. If it's anything like the rest of New Zealand it's probably super pretty. (Northern Wales is also super pretty.)
posted by aubilenon at 10:49 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Even just sticking to place names, the classic example is Loughborough (pronounced 'luff-bruh')

Belvoir is pronounced 'beaver' just to mess with visiting townies
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:57 AM on September 11, 2015


Someone told me how to pronounce "Puyallup" once but right now I have no idea.

I think it's pronounced "pull y'all up."
posted by straight at 12:23 PM on September 11, 2015


Someone told me how to pronounce "Puyallup" once but right now I have no idea.

Seattlite here. It's 'Pew-AL-lup'.

Watch this inspirational video about how we're all gunna die under the shadow of the evil volcano Mt. Rainier; it pronounces the town name correctly in the clip: Puyallup Lahar.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:31 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


That's pyu-AL-up, sir.
posted by lkc at 12:43 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I just spent about twenty minutes watching and rewatching the Naomi Watts clip in order to learning to say this word. I totally had it!

Then I listened to the Eddie from Ohio track, and it completely destroyed everything.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:07 PM on September 11, 2015


...And now let's go back to Liam, who's in the twentieth hour of pronouncing the name of the town, and where the weather he described at the top of the newscast has already passed. Liam?

Llafwrmyllochgollochowyndlliriamoll
posted by not_on_display at 7:28 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]




The really amazing part of this story is that a 9 degree difference in temperature between two parts of the country was newsworthy.
posted by leaper at 8:13 AM on September 12, 2015


What's really funny is that it was so gratuitous; he's reporting the temperature at RAF Mona, quote, "just up the road from Llanfairpwll..."

In other words he was having a laugh finding a pretext to say it on air; it's not by any means the nearest town to where the temperature was reported.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:58 PM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


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