Post by jerryfriedmanI'd pronounce "Berkshire" in the UK with the "work" vowel.
Berkshire County here in Massachusetts is /bRkSR/, and the eponymous
mountain range is /D@ bRkSRz/. But three-syllable <-shire> names,
like Devonshire Street in Boston, get the full "shire", /'dEvn-,SaIr/,
not /-SiR/ "sheer".[1]
Post by jerryfriedmanWhen did this "Barkshire", "clark" thing get started anyway?
Long enough ago to have influenced the spelling of the town (now city)
of Hartford, Connecticut. It's actually a bit surprising to me, given
that the Boston accent picked up other SEEngE sound changes,[2] that they
don't put an /A/ in "Berkshire".
-GAWollman
[1] All but two or maybe three of our county-names come from English
toponymy: Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, Worcester,
Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable,
Dukes County, and Nantucket. The current Norfolk County is a later
split from Suffolk County, but there was an earlier Norfolk County
which was abolished in colonial times when it was found to be in New
Hampshire. Similarly, the counties of Dukes County [sic] and
Nantucket were transferred from New York colony to Massachusetts Bay
colony in the 17th century.
[2] For example, many Bostonians have the TRAP-BATH split, something
not shared by most other non-rhotic AmE accents, and this is explained
as a change that arose a time when it was fashionable for Bostonians
to imitate the speech of London, *after* the same split took place in
South East England.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
***@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
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my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)