Why does Fontella Bass pronounce her surname to rhyme with "brass" and not like "base" as in a bass guitar?

@Hasmita Yes, why? Do they pronounce her name "Fontella Base" in London and the South? It's news to me if they do.

@HairbrushDiva Because you and I pronounce Brass differently. I say it like ah

@Hasmita What do you mean? There's only one way to pronounce "brass". It rhymes with "ass", "class", "glass", "grass", "lass", "mass", "pass" and any other words you can think of ending in "ass".

@HairbrushDiva In the north you pronounce the a as a soft a but in the south it's pronounced with a hard a.

@Hasmita I haven't a clue what a "hard a" or a "soft a" are. "A" is a vowel. How can it be "hard" or "soft"?

@HairbrushDiva The pronunciation of a is totally different in the south. We say bath more like barn

@Hasmita Do you? How do you say "bat"?

@HairbrushDiva Same as you lol.


Where there's muck there's brass will sound totally different in the south.

@Hasmita I should jolly well think so. Where on earth do they pronounce "muck" like "brass"? Lol :)

@HairbrushDiva lol

@Hasmita Now, this is a very important question. Where you live, how do you decide which words to pronounce with one type of "a" sound and which words to pronounce the other way? What is the local phonetic rule regarding that?

@HairbrushDiva I think wherever you live you learn by imitating as a kid and then that pronunciation sticks with you.

@Hasmita Hmmm. That's not really answering my question, is it? Just imitating what you hear without even knowing the reason why? What sort of dictionary would use that to explain phonetics?