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).

A lot of Glaswegians pronounce it glezga too. 😆

Me, but I'm Irish 😆

I think you have managed to finally explain to me this really confusing 'r' - I just don't get it. But it's not 'ar', it's 'ah' - am I right? It makes sense to me now

Bath = Barth wtf = Bahth

It’s definitely ah. Just a long ah. No rs involved. It’s only people who don’t really pronounce rs that think they’re putting them in there.

Received pronunciation would be Glaaz-geow, where one wez kilts instead orv trysers.

Like New-Zealanders, the English epper claarssis take great pride in mispronouncing every vowel sound.

Hugh Skinner is absolutely brilliant at mocking this up in The Windsors

This is no good. You're supposed to randomly insert an 'r' into every word according to some English people commenting on every 'how do you pronounce' threads.
(Posters from the rest of the nations then read in puzzlement wondering how the country that doesn't pronounce the 'r's in anything has come to the conclusion that it's adding in extra, silent 'r's)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=kJw0pol-_y8

glesga. Authentic pronunciation. 🤣

Surely it doesn’t matter where you/we are from. It’s glaz-go!

I’m grimly fascinated that so many posters are refusing to believe in different accents.

Yep. I definitely don't speak the Queen's English

MadameMinimes RP and Standard English are two different things. Standard English means grammatically “correct” English that is used for formal communication. You can speak Standard English with a Glaswegian accent and people with RP accents will regularly use non-standard English. There’s plenty of posh slang and/or jargon used by people with RP accent. Standard vs non-Standard is about what you say, not the accent you say it with.

Thank goodness someone has made the distinction! I have a posh Edinburgh, definitely Scottish accent, and say "Glass-gow" with a short "a". Thats still affected (although not as much as the ridiculous "Glarsgow" and I think "Glazgow" is more correct. It will depend on the letters following the "s" as to how its correctly pronounced but I think the "z" sound is more correct.

Pronouncing it with an "r" turns the first syllable into a long syllable rather than a short one, when both should be short syllables because they both begin with a "g" (two "g"s in one word generally bounce off each other as two short syllables") so the "r" sounds is all wrong.

Annoyingly, I can accurately mimic and therefore adopt an English accent, but strangely it comes out very, very posh. I don't like it! I think thats why so many posh people mumble or use vocal fry, so that it transmutes the class connotations of the accent. To me, adding a mid vowel "r" is trying to ape a posh accent but it comes across as a little fake.

The Queen says "Glasgow" in that clip.

RP changes all the time. Apparently English wasn't even so universally non-rhotic in England until televisions began appearing in most homes and people started copying newsreaders' pronunciation. Prior to that, as another poster pointed out, a posh accent was achieved by some by making "a"s sound like "e"s. Almost like proto-New Zealnders...

My favourite RP inaccurate pronunciation is the difference between "boarder" and "border". Apparently, amongst many RP speakers, they are indistinguishable, so intent are they on suppressing the "r" this time! Adding in "r"s where there are none and removing them where they should be! How bizarre! And how difficult that must make it to correctly pronounce many foreign languages, including all of the Scandinavian languages, German and French

I'm Irish so have a rhotic accent.
Having been on MN a while, I now know what people mean when they write 'ar', although it always causes confusion on threads!

However, I'm not sure using 'ah' instead represents the required sound - it doesn't in all accents anyway.
For example, in my accent the 'ah' in Bah doesn't have the same vowel sound as the 'ar' in car when said in an RP accent. So when I see 'ah' written, the sound in my head is not that which the writer wanted to convey. I think.
Accents are tricky 😅

@DappledThings
This is the ah sound I mean. The speakers are American, but I say it the same way. It doesn't sound like ar in an RP accent...does it?

forvo.com/word/bah_humbug/

Listening again, I think I say ah more like the second speaker. I'm not very good at this!!

Definitely the long A. It sounds like glass: hard, cold, shining in the rain - just like Glasgow!!

Glazgo

My favourite RP inaccurate pronunciation is the difference between "boarder" and "border". Apparently, amongst many RP speakers, they are indistinguishable, so intent are they on suppressing the "r" this time! Adding in "r"s where there are none and removing them where they should be! How bizarre! And how difficult that must make it to correctly pronounce many foreign languages, including all of the Scandinavian languages, German and French

I have a non rhotic accent, northern English accent and border and boarder sound identical to me,,, I'm even imagining them in other accents and I can't understand a difference! Could someone tell me how they'd make it different? Interesting!

Your second point here confuses me. Do you imagine that people with non rhotic accents can't pronounce Rs? 🤣 my foreign language pronunciation is just fine! Besides - the Rs in French are totally different to the way Rs are pronounced in any rhotic English-speaking accent I can think of. Also you seem to think that people are "intent" on not pronouncing Rs... it's not a choice, it's just my accent?! People seem to have a very strong opinion on something most people have never even thought about 🤣

I live near 'Wishy'. Glasgow pronounced 'Glazgo' 'Glesky' 'Glezgy'
These threads do my nut in. RP is an accent but it's not the 'correct' one. It's an accent used by some social groups.

I’m glad you admit that, as I do think some RP sounds silly! My MiL is at such lengths to try to hide the fact that she’s actually northern that she does things like pronouncing lasagne ‘lasaargne’. She even once said ‘sarnta’ for Santa at Christmas, before correcting herself when she realised she’d gone too far!

Including the people who live here.

People saying Glaaaaaarrrrrrrrssssscoh get the 🙄

This is why, when I'm explaining the long 'a' sound I use in my non-rhotic, broadly Southern English (what I think the OP would call 'RP') accent, I use 'ah' and not 'ar' - because it's confusing for rhotic and international speakers. (It's not just an English thing, btw - standard German is non-rhotic in the same way the variant of English I speak is).

I would say Glaahs-go, but PPs noting the way 'Glaswegian' or place names such as 'Glastonbury' are pronounced does make me wonder whether that's actually wrong as opposed to just a variant.

*'that' being 'my pronunciation', for the avoidance of doubt.

I think (I'm not quite sure, because 'border' and 'boarder' sound the same in my accent) the difference would be pronouncing 'boarder' with a diphthong - making a slight difference between the 'o' and 'a' sounds?

Not having a rhotic r is not inaccurate though as a previous poster said. It's just a different accent.
A non-rhotic speaker pronounces an r in certain circumstances, most noticeably at the beginning of a word like run. In other circumstances the r is a modifier of the preceding vowel, eg. car.