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Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Stroud 1906
I don't know why two of them are out of uniform, but these men are the police of Stroud,
a market town in south central Gloucestershire. The photo was made in 1906.
Stroud is pronounced to rhyme with "loud". The reason both words seem to have this odd phonetic is because of what is known as the Great Vowel Shift. No sooner had the printing press regularized most spellings in English, than the accent notably shifted over an extended period of two centuries, so we end up with anomalies like "plough" (plow in American English) and "rough". There is another little market town, to the South in the county Somerset that equally retains its old pronunciation called Frome, which is pronounced to rhyme with "room". This is also the case with the city of Rome, which used to be pronounced "room" as well. The Great Vowel Shift occurred at the same time in other European languages and although theories abound as to why, no one definitive explanation is accepted.
Stroud is still today quite a small place and I wonder if they even have a police station at all, given the draconian public sector cuts there have been under this present government's austerity programme. I dare say these gallant boys in blue knew each and every poacher in the area!
I have dear friends in Frome, and folks in the West Country seem amazed to hear an American pronounce the name correctly. Oh, and "regularizing" English spelling doesn't seem to have caused some of it to make sense, as you demonstrate so well.
There are towns named Stroud in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Oklahoma. I grew up in Stroud, OK, and they used to have an annual brick and rolling pin throwing competition there because they had a rolling pin factory in Stroud, and a brick refractory in Stroud, OK. People showed up from each of the Strouds.
Stroud is pronounced to rhyme with "loud". The reason both words seem to have this odd phonetic is because of what is known as the Great Vowel Shift. No sooner had the printing press regularized most spellings in English, than the accent notably shifted over an extended period of two centuries, so we end up with anomalies like "plough" (plow in American English) and "rough". There is another little market town, to the South in the county Somerset that equally retains its old pronunciation called Frome, which is pronounced to rhyme with "room". This is also the case with the city of Rome, which used to be pronounced "room" as well. The Great Vowel Shift occurred at the same time in other European languages and although theories abound as to why, no one definitive explanation is accepted.
ReplyDeleteStroud is still today quite a small place and I wonder if they even have a police station at all, given the draconian public sector cuts there have been under this present government's austerity programme. I dare say these gallant boys in blue knew each and every poacher in the area!
I have dear friends in Frome, and folks in the West Country seem amazed to hear an American pronounce the name correctly. Oh, and "regularizing" English spelling doesn't seem to have caused some of it to make sense, as you demonstrate so well.
DeleteThere are towns named Stroud in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Oklahoma. I grew up in Stroud, OK, and they used to have an annual brick and rolling pin throwing competition there because they had a rolling pin factory in Stroud, and a brick refractory in Stroud, OK. People showed up from each of the Strouds.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Throwing bricks reminds me of a riot I once walked into in Austin during the Vietnam War.
Delete