Talk:Luton

WikiProject page
To try to be a bit more organised, I made a subpage in the Bedfordshire WikiProject here, if anyone's interested. At the moment it's mainly just a to do list with what I had in my mind.

I thought it's not worth starting a new WikiProject, the Bedfordshire one is pretty dead but I made a new page to keep the Luton bits separate.

Feel free to add or change anything on there. I'd like to make Luton and related articles really good!

- odg (talk) 12:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

"Large" town
There is a discussion at talk:Milton Keynes that may be of interest to editors of this article (since it also uses the phrase "large town"). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:06, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Luton/Dunstable urban area into Luton
I think this article would be best moved to the Luton page and mentioned on Dunstable and Houghton Regis page as it is just a subdivision and has not many notable sources...it be best merged into either the geography page of Luton or a new tab which links the page to and from each three towns... DragonofBatley (talk) 14:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose< because of disconnect with reality in the ground. Compare Luton and Dunstable Hospital. They are conjoined twins. When reality and model disagree, change the model. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:57, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The BUA is now just "Luton" so maybe should be merged as it doesn't seem like there's a huge difference.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:42, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, ok, I assumed (tch tch) that the proposal meant deviating from the ONS name. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:40, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note that that was from the 2011 census so its possible it was renamed sometime between this page's creation in 2007 and 2011 but the most recent 2020 estimates from City Population use just "Luton".  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 07:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
 * In that case, let's just wait for the official renaming in the 2021 census, it shouldn't be much longer now unless covid has affected the timetable. WP:CRYSTAL. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:01, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still not sure. What is actually wrong with "Luton urban area"? Dunstable etc will accept that they are in the urban area but will kick back against being declared part of Luton when the RSs (and physical geography) says otherwise. I know we had continuous edit wars over Newport Pagnell, which only calmed down when the Milton Keynes urban area article was created and the ONS could be cited as definitive. This is a generic problem because no town or city boundaries have been revised in over 50 years and most have grown organically beyond those limits. So we get continuous "oh not it isn't" v "oh yes it is" arguments about the status of contiguous settlements. So I think that this one needs to be escalated to WP:WikiProject UK geography, it is not reasonable to deal with it in a piecemeal fashion like this.  I will raise it tomorrow. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose - There are a few things like the Luton to Dunstable Busway and the hospital mentioned above that are relevant for an article on the Luton/Dunstable built-up area but not really relevant just for Luton. It might be worth moving the article on the urban area if the name's changed but as was suggested above might be worth waiting til we get the 2021 census data, which may be in 2023? The urban area article could also do with expanding and more sources adding. Eopsid (talk) 22:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussion moved
This proposal is being discussed as part of a more general discussion about the principle, at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject UK geography. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

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Pronunciation /ˈluːtən/ vs. /ˈlʌt.ən/
I remember having once read that Luton is not pronounced as one would expect from its written form but as if it were Lutton, thus /ˈlʌt.ən/. This was in context with an article about an episode of Space 1999 named "The rules of Luton". The name of the planet was an allusion to the town of Luton. In the article it was mentioned that, while the series was made in the Britisch ITV studios, most of the filming crew including scriptwriters and actors was American and unaware of the different pronunciation by British locals and thereby erroneously pronouncing it /ˈluːtən/. Now I am confused. 2003:CE:BF13:20E7:AD72:E45B:6AA9:B407 (talk) 13:37, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I think your recollection is flawed. In received pronunciation, it is LOOTon. ("Loot" as in booty.) Definitely not LUTton. In local Estuary English, it is LOOʔn, where the t is swallowed. Definitely no double t sound. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:17, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, this is what the article says: Luton is a Bedfordshire town with an airport. Freiberger saw it on a roadsign and pronounced it    "Lew-ton" instead of "Lut-on". It is very odd to British viewers. 2003:CE:BF13:20AE:90D8:A8F5:DDD7:70F2 (talk) 14:14, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The original question was whether it should rhyme with button. No, it should not: the IPA as given is correct and matches the audio clip.
 * If I understand you correctly, maybe Freiberger was trying too hard: compare US and UK pronunciations of "student". (I don't speak IPA. I had look at Help:IPA/English but it doesn't seem to give a notation for "Lew" pronunciation [as in l'you, not Lewis]. I have asked for advice and will repost here when I get it.) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:37, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hard to believe that anyone would even try to pronounce it as L'yuton but the IPA would be /ˈljuːtən/ . (The /j/ in IPA is like y in yacht). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)