Sean in Asheville, North Carolina, wonders how to pronounce the nearby town of Leicester. Say it the way the locals do. It’s part of a family of British place names affected by vowel reduction and haplology, the omission of a sound or syllable that is repeated within a word. These include Worcester, Gloucester, and Winchester, all of which include the -cester root that goes back to a Latin word that means “camp.” This is part of a complete episode.
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