Say the place name: choose the spoken form

What you are practising

We changed trains at Leicester.
The meeting is in Reading on Thursday.

What to do

Each sentence names a British town or district. Two respellings are printed in brackets at the end of the line: one is how local speakers say the name, the other is how the spelling tempts you to read it. Type the correct respelling exactly as it is printed, capital letters included.

Questions

1. We changed trains at Leicester. ___ (LES-ter / LIE-ches-ter)
2. The cathedral in Worcester is worth the detour. ___ (WOR-ses-ter / WUSS-ter)
3. Her family comes from Norwich. ___ (NOR-wich / NORR-ij)
4. The festival in Edinburgh runs all August. ___ (ED-in-bruh / ED-in-burg)
5. Our office moved from London to Reading. ___ (REED-ing / RED-ing)

Show the answers

1. LES-ter
2. WUSS-ter
3. NORR-ij
4. ED-in-bruh
5. RED-ing

Items 1 and 2 belong to the family that swallows its written middle syllable, so the spoken name has two syllables where the spelling shows three. Item 3 shrinks its ending and silences the w. Item 4 ends in a weak vowel, never a hard consonant, whatever the spelling suggests. Item 5 is an unrelated word that only shares its spelling with the everyday verb for books; its first syllable is the colour red.

Watch the video lesson

Say the place name: choose the spoken form

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