Buckingham Palace and Stonehenge are leaving some tourists confused

The UK may feel familiar to us Brits, but our nation is quite the tourist destination for holidaymakers around the world. Just like we pop over to see Paris or Rome tourists jet to Britain to see our landmarks and capital city.

However, it seems that some of our most favourite sights are proving a little trickier to pronounce than others. While we may stumble over Chichen itzá when in Mexico or garble the Netherlands Rijksmuseum others are also mispronouncing our top spots.

Of course, the London Eye and Big Ben are both safe, but three UK attractions were found to be commonly said, well, incorrectly. Hawaiian Islands looked at some of the most popular tourist sites in the world and created a list of the top 20 most mispronounced.

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To find out which places were being jumbled most often, they "compiled a seed list of the most popular tourist attractions in every country and U.S. state and every country’s most popular beaches and beach resorts, landmarks, museums and nature spots".

They then searched on Forgo, an online pronunciation library, to find out how many times the correct pronunciation had been searched by tourists unsure of how to say the name.

The first British entry was actually Buckingham Palace in London. The Royal residence made it as far up the list as number six – and we've got a suspicion it's because of the cheeky way we say our h's.

All over social media sites like TikTok, holidaymakers can be seen heading to the palace for the changing of the guard. Many of them will pronounce Buckingham with a hard "h" – like the meat product – rather than missing it out.

Also on the list was Stonehenge at number 16. It may seem confusing that this ancient monument made the list considering it is said exactly as it's spelt.

However, one tourist on TripAdvisor may offer some explanation. They claim they've heard tourists from the US saying "stone hedge" instead!

The final UK attraction to make the list was Trafalgar Square at number 17. Again we think this is likely because people are pronouncing the 'r' on the end of Trafalgar rather than cutting it off like we do here in Blighty.

But, we must not get too smug. Much higher on the list than the UK entries was the Champs Elysées and Montmartre in France. We have to admit those are a tongue-tie to say.

Plus, the pronunciation of "ll" in Spanish words as a "y" often trips us Brits up. That's before we even get to the twisting sounds of the German entries.

Still, we'd love to see tourists try and say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. The Welsh went all out on that one!

Have you ever embarrassed yourself by mispronouncing a place name incorrectly? Tell us in the comments…

The most mispronounced tourist attractions:

1. Champs Elysées, France
2. Casa Batlló, Spain
3. Chichen itzá, Mexico
4. Rijksmuseum, Netherlands
5. Montmartre, France
6. Taj Mahal, India
7. Buckingham Palace, UK
8. Arc de Triomphe, France
9. La Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower), France
10. Trastevere, Italy
11. Neuschwanstein, Germany
12. Machu Picchu, Peru
13. Burj Khalifa, UAE
14. Place des Vosges, France
15. Alhambra, Spain
16. Stonehenge, UK
17. Trafalgar Square, UK
18. Torres del Paine, Chile
19. Petra, Jordan
20. Jardin des Tuileries, France

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