If your accent is RP English, how do you pronounce “Glasgow”?

[Wigeon]

Settle an argument between DH and me:

YANBU: Glasgow in an RP English accent is pronounced “Glarsgow” with a long “arr” or “arh” in the middle. Like the “a” in “car” (in an RP accent).

YABU: Glasgow in an RP English accent is pronounced “Gl-ah-sgow”, with a short “ah”, like the “a” in “cat” (in an RP accent).

That list now makes sense. People are putting the long /a/ sound before fricative sounds /s/, /th/ and /f/

I’m from the south and say the first way.

I'm the same Emu. It's extremely annoying. Also when people say they have an RP accent I think they mean they have a non regional English accent not that they speak like the Queen or Jacob Rees Mogg.

Yes she did. But that has been superseded by multiple posts explaining why using ar rather than ah is unhelpful and confusing.

@Igotjelly

Glad you added this!

I worked with a Glaswegian 30 years ago and I was starting to think I imagined Glazgy 😁

And several posts from people with both rhotic and non-rhotic accents saying that ah isn't particularly helpful either - because in many accents it's not the same sound as ar (ie what people with non-rhotic accents mean by ar). I agree that ah would cause less obvious confusion though.
Using IPA would be best of course, but most people don't know it.

I agree with @LizzieAnt that 'ah' is definitely the sound in the word 'cat' in my (non rhotic) accent.

Maybe we can just say long A and sort A? 😅

*short A, not sort, obviously :)

Oh dear @Belephant, unlike you and, it seems, the OP, ah isn't the short a of cat in my (Irish, rhotic) accent either😅

Neither is it the ar of a non-rhotic speaker though.

Can we just divide into pirate aar and non-pirate aah, me hearties?

Ok, I get the explanation from the phonetics expert about why I’m wrong, but do you get that I say the letter name R the same as ah and ar? So I can hear an “R” in how I pronounce Glasgow. Even if R is different to the sound rrr which is at the start of “rabbit”, “Richard” etc.

And that if there was a completely different word spelt “glarsgow”, perhaps a type of animal, I would pronounce that word the same as I pronounce “Glasgow”.

YES!

Ok, I get the explanation from the phonetics expert about why I’m wrong, but do you get that I say the letter name R the same as ah and ar? So I can hear an “R” in how I pronounce Glasgow. Even if R is different to the sound rrr which is at the start of “rabbit”, “Richard” etc.
Yes, because I also have a SE non-rhotic Enish accent. How I say "R" is nothing like I pronounce "R". "R" and "rabbit" indeed sound totally different.

Which is why it makes even less sense to use "ar" if you want to be understood by people who do pronounce their Rs as Rs. Because what you and I see as "ar" really isn't actually r.

@HaveringWavering “However, what I am wondering is why did you want to know OP?”

because DH pronounces it with a short A, despite having the same accent as me and therefore doing a long A in castle, bath, giraffe etc etc. So I’ve been accusing him of doing it as an affectation, and he thinks I pronounce it wrong.

He’s been amused to read all the responses on this thread and we both feel somewhat vindicated, although the majority is with me! 😄

I say Glasgow and Doncaster with short 'cat' a. But bath, grass, glass with a long one.

Year 1 pupils know more about phonics than you do😂
You pronounce the letter r/R /ar/ A/a = /ay/ B/b = bee but that's different from the letter sounds eg /r/ is just rrr on its own - no vowel sound

I can’t find the post by @AchatAVendre , and this important point deserves a whole nother thread really, but I discovered a few years ago that not everyone thinks lower case and upper case letters are pronounced differently when this came up in passing during a conversation between me, DH and a friend with a 1st in English from Cambridge, who both thought I was insane.

So, I had convinced myself that A, B, C, D etc are pronounced like you are singing the alphabet song (A like hay without the h, B like bee, c like sea etc) , and a, b, c, d are pronounced “ah, buh, cuh, duh” etc.

Upon DH and DFriend asking me to explain why and clearly thinking I’d lost it, I realised that this logic didn’t me much sense, and was probably completely wrong, so it’s quite a relief to find at least one other person (AChat) who may think the same!

They do indeed! 😂

So, I had convinced myself that A, B, C, D etc are pronounced like you are singing the alphabet song (A like hay without the h, B like bee, c like sea etc) , and a, b, c, d are pronounced “ah, buh, cuh, duh” etc. But that's almost right except it's ah, buh, c with no vowel sound, duh

So if you say that you “pronounce Glasgow with an R” (still not true, but let’s pretend) because you hear the name of the letter R in the middle of it, do you say that you pronounce “seesaw” with a C, because it starts with the sound of the name of the letter C?

if yes you are completely bananas!
if no then saying you pronounce Glasgow with an R is still as untrue as it was when we all presumed you meant you pronounce an R sound in it.

You keep saying “yes yes I understand but do YOU get what I mean?”. We do get what you mean which is “if I try to transcribe my pronunciation of Glasgow, I put an R in it, because that is one of the letter combinations in my accent that will result in a long A vowel sound”. What is and always has been impossible is that you or anyone else pronounces an R sound in Glasgow!!

The A in Glasgow I pronounce like AR in CAR.

Not a ‘long A’ or ‘AH’ or ‘Aah’ .I think that’s what the person above does to.

That is a “long A”!

someone upthread posted this which explains very well (note: without making reference to R!) Trap-bath split

Me! Yorkshire lass though!

I have an RP accent and would pronounce it Glazgo. Glaaarsgo would be a 'posh' pronunciation. Does anyone remember the repulsive art critic Bian Sewell? He had the grating 'posh' accent and would have lengthened the a into a kind of sneering drawl: Glaaaarrsgo.

I have never liked the posh/UP accent. It isn't even pleasant. It's ugly, and is designed to intimidate and belittle people. The RP is just a mildly refined accent, with the regional accent lurking in the background. Stephen Fry, for example, has an RP rather than a truly posh accent. I grew up in Norfolk and absolutely hate the Norfolk accent. I've done everything I can to get rid of it, and I don't apologize. It's ghastly.

@queenmeadhbh - it’s not a long a to me. A long a is is ‘way’, ‘tray’. Short a ‘car’. So Grass is ‘at’ sound, not a long or short a