I listened to Obama’s speech last night and a question arose.
How do you pronounce Appalachia ?
Like " appalashia" ?
Or “appalachia” ?
Both, and at least a third way as well. It depends on where you are from. The two I hear in NH are:
Apple-A-chia
Apple-aa-chia
I’ve never heard the “sh” version up north.
I know someone who was from there and he said it was apple-AT-cha. He always said, “If you don’t pronounce it right I’ll throw an apple atcha.” (Willard Scott said the same thing but I don’t know what his connection to the area might be.)
Pennsylvania (eastern) here: App-a-lashia.
Same here. When I attended Appalachian State, we all said it with the first and third “A” pronouced like “apple.” Northern folk seem to say the third “a” like “State.”
32-34
Ah paw lay shaw
I say it the apple-atcha way after reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
Before that, I usually heard it pronounced with a long A in the middle. I’m from California, BTW.
Lately (living in Virginia) I’ve heard it pronounced both ways.
I arguably grew up in the region, and I say “Apple AY tcha”. Of course, whether the NW corner of PA is included or not depends on who you talk to, hence “arguably”. I consider my background “Appalachian” when it suits me.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary offers three different pronunciations: acha, aycha, and aysha. All are stressed on the next-to-last syllable, with the final “ia” an unstressed single vowel.
Having spent most of my life in mid-western PA, I prounounce Appalachia the same as Yabob, but would be one of the people who question whether he grew up there. I think of it as starting more southeast of Pittsburgh and running solidly up central PA, with NW PA being a lovely rustic area unto itself (where my family, like so many Pittsburgh suburbanites, has a camp).
My Dad was born in the mountains of North Carolina and attended Appalachian, and he insisted on the apple-atcha pronunciation. He was something of a stickler for detail, as a former English teacher and full time editor.
Sailboat
Friends of mine in VA called it “Apple-atcha”, I’d only ever heard “Apple-AY-cha” before I met them.
I grew up in south-western Pennsylvania, and we always talked about the apple-aychen mountains. We were wrong. I lived in Virginia for the last six years, and spent a good deal of time in the hills fishing, especially around Damascus, Virginia, which lies just north of the border with Tennessee, and which is definitely “real” Appalachia. There they say apple-atcha, and I’m inclined to say they are right. It is spectacular country, with beautiful mountain valleys and great trout water. With it coming up on spring, I regret that I’m in Frankfurt and won’t be able to make a trip to Damascus to fish Whitetop Laurel and the South Fork of the Holston.
The strangest pronunciation I ever heard was from someone who had clearly mis-read the word at some formative stage of their linguistic development and insisted on saying it as “apple-a-CHAIN.”
South Carolina native here, I almost always say the adjective as AP-pull-ACH-in. I try never to say the noun form, because I do tend to pronounce it as “AP-pull-AY-chuh,” and I think I had someone very convincing tell me that was wrong once. Consequently, I try always to say “the Appalchian mountains region” or the like.
My family is from western PA (Johnstown, if that means anything to anyone), and we all say it this way, too (with the a in “lash” being long, in case that’s not the same as toadspittle). The strongest syllable is the third, with a secondary stress on the first.
AppleATcha. I picked it up traveling in the Blue Ridges.
They can throw an apple at cha, but you can never say an apple ate cha.
Just sounds better, anyway.
Native West Virginian here.
AppleATcha.
Ditto from Appalachian Georgia. I grew up hearing and saying “Apple AY tcha”.
My Berea, KY informants insisted on Apple-latch-a. Interesting that it’s so varies even within Appalachia.
I live in the Appalachian part of Ohio. Here, the locals pronounce the region with a short A, ( apple-atcha), but pronounce the mountain range with a long A.