Ronin - pronounciation of 'Hereford'

In Ronin, when Robert De Niro's character is trying 'interrogating' Sean Bean's character, he mispronounces the place name 'Hereford'*.

In the film he constantly says 'Hear-ford' as opposed to the proper pronounciation of 'Hair-Re-Ford'.

I can see two explanations:

Out of universe: It's just the 'normal' American mis-pronounciation of UK place names. However, I'd have thought Robert De Niro would have known better and certainly Sean Bean (being English) would know how to pronounce it.
In universe: It just proves that Robert De Niro's character is purely messing with Sean Bean's character as he doesn't know how to pronounce Hereford either, which he would if he'd visited and/or trained there.

So, which is it? Or, is it something else? Is there any secured information if this was part of Robert De Niro's character's plan of calling out Sean Bean's character as an impostor?

*Note - Hereford is where the SAS are based in south-west England.

dialogue ronin

Best Answer

I think you're reading too much into that dialogue. DeNiro's character is definitely someone with a very American accent. It has a Bronx/New Jersey flavor to it, I think. Even so, while he doesn't distinctly pronounce with three syllables, it's not distinctly two, either. It sounds like he wants to pronounce it with three, but is too linguistically lazy to enunciate it. That's a matter of opinion, though, for sure.

But that's really besides the point. There is nothing to indicate that Sean Bean's character doesn't know how to pronounce it. With DeNiro's character in his face, confronting him for being a fraud and choking him, his not taking the time to say "Hold up, mate, you're pronouncing that like a Yank" really has no particular significance. Also, when the German later asks about it, he does use the three syllable pronunciation, but doesn't bother to discuss or correct DeNiro's pronunciation, so whether or not someone takes note of it, it has been demonstrated that you can know the correct one, and not take issue with a secondary or slightly mispronounced usage by someone else.

An American, talking with an American accent.... none of these mercenaries, worrying about a gun fight and getting paid, cares enough to get pedantic about it if they know what he's referring to. I don't think that implies some sort of deeper subterfuge on his part, because even never having been there, there's no doubt Bean's character from the UK, so that wouldn't effect how he'd pronounce a British city spelled that way.