FOR years I have noticed, and it’s troubled me a little, that locals to the Lake District and non locals tend pronounce the name of England’s highest mountain differently.
To me it has always been, phonetically, ‘scorefell pike’ to many others, ‘scarfell pike’.
The pedant in me has until now played a subservient role to the pragmatist who is happy to embrace changing language. But recently three things happened which have prompted this letter.
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Firstly, sitting at an adjacent table in the Kendal Brewery Arts Grainstore restaurant to where a group were talking about a walk to the summit of Scarfell Pike (sic), I had difficulty in not leaning over to correct them but I did manage to resist. But then secondly, within a couple of days, an article in the Spectator magazine on Scafell Pike included the line “ pedants note, the first syllable is ‘score’” and thirdly I bought the excellent book by Al Phizacklea and Mike Cocker on the history of climbing on Scafell, “Nowt but a fleein’ thing”.
Here Mr Phizacklea details the changes in the word from the old Norse, ‘Scofell’ (bald mountain), through ‘Scawfell’ (apparently a spelling used by the Whitehaven News until the 1960s) to the current Scafell. He goes on to say that locals “still consider the inclusion of the ‘w’ to be the correct way of spelling the name. It is certainly the correct way of pronouncing the name”.
Thus I found I had allies. I am not the only one to dislike the incorrect ‘Scarfell’ pronunciation.
So there we are. No confusion seems to exist over the way we say Snowdon or Ben Nevis. Even Slieve Donard and Carrantoohil achieve pretty standard enunciations, so perhaps we could agree on a standard way of pronouncing our highest mountain and, obviously, I feel it should sound like ‘Scorefell’.
David Snaith
Kendal
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