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THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
THE GREAT PRONUNCIATION DEBATE
Allenton or Allington?
www.guardianonline.co.nz
BY SUSAN SANDYS
SUSAN.S@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
It’s a topic that divides Ashburton – just how do you say Allenton? Named after Ashburton absentee landlord the Reverend J G Allen in the 1800s, the western Ashburton area attracts many a mispronunciation, with many residents saying the middle syllable as “ling”, and some cases “link”. Among those in the Allington camp is Allenton Meat Centre butcher Paddy Kennedy. He said yesterday that it was not until he was standing back and looking at signs at the Allenton shopping centre, that he thought about how the place name should be said. “I probably do pronounce it wrong, and probably 90 per cent of the people who ring us up do as well,” Mr Kennedy said. He was used to getting deliveries from out of town with the name of his business misspelled as the Allington Meat Centre, all because the senders have taken their cue from how people pronounce the place name. But he could not see his pronunciation changing. “I’ve had 16 years of saying it the way I’m saying it, the only way I would change it is if I changed the name of the shop.
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It’s force of habit, I suppose,” Mr Kennedy said. Long-time Allenton neighbours Bevis Begg and Mona Reddecliffe said they had always said Allenton, but were also used to hearing people saying Allington. “It takes bigger things than that to annoy me,” Mr Begg said. He had lived on Middle Road his whole life, and attended Allenton School as a child when the area had only a few houses and the streets were shingle. Retired Allenton School teacher Bob Overend taught at the school between 1984 and 2006, and said about half of his pupils would pronounce the word as Allington. The mispronunciation was in such common usage, he never bothered to correct them. He was of a generation where fellow Ashburton residents would have had parents and grandparents from England, Scotland or Ireland, so were used to varying pronunciations of different words. Not everyone is so easy-going however, and many are dismayed at the mispronunciation.
CONTINUED “Al-len-ton”, says Bevis Begg.
P2 “Al-ling-ton”, says Paddy Kennedy.
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