specifically place names, what are the most common place names that people get wrong and what is the correct pronunciation?

i will start with a few British places for the Americans :)

Leicester/Leicester square --LESTA
Edinburgh- EDIN-BURRA
Worcester- WUSTA
Loughborough is LUFF-BURRA, not, (as Americans have asked me before)LOO-GRA-BROOG

Louisville, KY is always cornfusing to peeps. I have talked to both sides and both seem acceptable pronunciations....loo-ville and luey-ville.

What's the correct pronounciation of a place name though? Is it the way that posh people say it or how local people with local accents and dialects say it? I'm from Edinburgh actually and I know English people that have lived here for years that still pronounce Scottish place names in odd ways and they sound even sillier if they try to do a Scots accent or dialect.

Basically, just don't even bother to ask directions if you come here. Just get a map or one of those satnav things.

So, there is no rhyme or reason to how Brits pronounce names. Go figure.

Well, there kind of is if you're familiar with the accents and dialects. It's not just place names. My mother tried to bring me up to speak "properly" and I often couldn't understand what other kids at school were saying.

How about ordinary words? Example: carrier and career

I put an accent on the 'ah' sound in Carrier. but for Career, I put more emphasis on the 'ee' sound.

Try pronouncing this one.
I actually could when I was in Wales, lol. At the mo my Welsh is a tad rusty.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

And I'm quite sure that no one here but me and Tawt can pronounce that last bit properly (unless there's other Scots or Dutch around. Or Welsh of course)
.
.

Me too with a slow drawl on all of it.

Llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-go-ger-u-chwurn-drob-ooll-llantus-ilio-gogo-goch

i think

yay, I said it for the first time, sort of right. Well my best attempt yet anyway.

@CrystalFairy,
i always had problems when i first lived in Holland pronouncing places ,especially ones with 'j' in them,

Spijkenisse became 'spidge-kenissa'
Ijssel 'ayg-sell'

Maasluis was 'mas-loo-is'
Hellevoetsluis 'hell-vo-ets-loo-is

until i was corrected on my pronunciation of Dutch places

Haha, my English friends needed a few years to get some of the Dutch pronounciation right. We got one town/city that's called "Goes", sounds more like "goose" than your English "goes" though.

One of my friends is a professional entertainer and he did a few Dutch songs a couple of times during our gig. Absolutely hilarious, as he didn't know what the heck he was singing, lol. He didn't do a bad job though.

BTW Hellevoetsluis and Spijkenisse aren't far from me.
.
.
.

i worked for 3 weeks in Spijkenisse i could have passed you on the road

i am quite fascinated though by place names and the pronunciation of them, for example when i was growing up i always thought that the Swedish city was 'gothenburg', as i got older i realized that it's only the English that call it this and it's proper name is 'goteborg' but it was only until a couple of years ago that i became aware that it is pronounced "yotaborg" rather than "gottyborg".

In the part of Scotland that I'm from a couple of the things that "authentic" Scots do is to often pronounce "a" as "A" (or "ay" phonetically, I suppose). So that you would say "cayrd" instead of "card" and oddly "clays", rather than "clothes". The hardened A occurs quite a lot anyway.

Another thing is that we often drop the letter T. Some people would even say that we "drap" it but that's maistly people from Glaysgay. There's a town near Edinburgh called Haddington and my mother used to laugh about how a woman that she knew that had a very strong accent pronounced it. It actually became monosylabic when she said it but part of that is just saying the word really quickly, or kind of grunting it. It was just like "Hayd" with a sort of "n" sound at the end.

There's a lot of slurring anyway and I think that probably doesn't help too much with being constantly stereotyped as a nation of drunks but I suppose that these speach patterns were originally developed by people that did do a fair bit of drinking.

People who have the Gaelic are fun to listen to, eh?