All I’m doing is repeating what I was told when I was a kid by someone born and raised in New Orleans.
I watched the show as a kid, and never noticed that Kate was slightly older than the kids I thought were their sons. I just watched the pilot on Roku, I think, and was surprised at the true story.
Best joke was that they looked at the rundown farmhouse, and instead of being shocked kind of reacted as if it were a bit of a step up from West Virginia. Subtle, but funny.
I listen to old-timey radio shows on Sirius/XM, and they often refer to “Los Ang-el-eez.” From my observations, shows from before the 1950s were most likely to do it, so maybe it was a transitional pronunciation?
On the old radio shows, you can also hear people say “roh-b’t” for robot (just like Zoidberg), and one guy pitching a commercial who wants us to be sure to get a healthy daily intake of “pro-tee-ins” (proteins).
I assume the “Cali-for-nye-ay” (instead of “nya”) was a device to get two more distinct sylables out of the name to fit the meter of whatever song, and so became cliche…
I’ve always wondered about the song PT109, with the lines about “Mac Ma Hun, the Irishmun”. Has there ever been a person that pronounced McMahon anyway other than McMan? Why wouldn’t “McMan the Irishman” work? Put something extra it there for the meter! You’re songwriters!
Huh. In my head, the the last name “McMahon” is pronounced with three clearly distinct syllables, at least in the USA, that I can recall (though with a little thinking, I’m not surprised that’s not the correct Irish pronunciation).
For example, the only famous person of that name I can think of offhand is the longtime former “sidekick” of Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” from the 1960s-1990s.
In this YouTube video using him as an example of the “Mandela Effect” in that many people recall him being a pitchman for the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, when in fact he had been one for a similar sweepstakes from American Family, and the narrator distinctly pronounces his name “Ed Mick-MAY-Hon”.
On the other hand, with some more searching, he pronounced his OWN name much closer to “McMan”, as you describe!
Sam Yorty was mayor of Los Angeles in the 60’s, and he pronounced it “Law-Sang-Gless”, no doubt contributing to the popularity of that pronunciation.
“Californee” is just the Spanish pronunciation with the last syllable clipped off. Five-barreled Spanish words were just a bridge (or syllable) too far for those 49ers. Even when modern Anglo Californians added the “a” back they contracted the pronunciation to four syllables.
Nobody would use the tortured “Califor-eye-ay” pronunciation unless they were trying to shoehorn it into a verse.
Also in California Love(Tupac & Dr. Dre) , where it is rhymed to “Bay”, “pay” & “way”.
I have a vague reference to being told by one of my high school teachers that one of those pronunciations was only used by Blacks, with the implication that it was considered “lower class”. This was in the early 70s, at an all-white school, and after all these years I can’t even remember which was which.
It goes along with reported American frontier speech and song like the refrain in “Going to Boston” and “Drunken Sailor,” /ˈɜɹlaɪ/ Earlye in the morning. Or in The Deerslayer, “I invy that man!” In authentic frontier dialect according to Cooper, envy was pronounced /ˈɪnvaɪ/. Most of this lore seems to have been collected in the second quarter of the 19th century, a time when mass literacy was first spreading in America thanks to Webster’s speller, and a favorite form of humor was poking fun at those who were still learning to spell. Artemus Ward became a famous humorist simply by misspelling what was otherwise ordinary prose. This was when the humorous “Oll Korrect” became abbreviated “O.K.”
That’s just what I came in to post. Great song!
The Crescent City has long been “Nawlins” to me.
Bugs Bunny, when trying to seem sophisticated and/or humorously putting on airs, referred to “Los AHNG-ah-lees” a few times IIRC.
There is also Ore-E-Gun and Worsh-ing-ton on the west coast.
My favorite national park in Californ-eye-ay is Yo-sem-eye-tee.
When I saw the thread title I was going to come in and say that it’s a lot more fun to pronounce ‘California’ that way in the song Spancil Hill, but you had already covered that.
One of the early 50s westerns shows about a “state marshall” out of SF has that for a chorus its closing theme which might be an 1840s folk song …
I can’t seem to find it in the title as the station where I used to watch it has trashed its former schedule in the year or so since we got rid of cable …
There Vince McMahon former owner of the WWF/e…
It parallels the reported 19th-century Irish pronunciation “Amerikay.”
More recently, it is pronounced “yo, semite”.
Whenever I hear or read about that pronunciation, Sam Yorty is the first person I think of. It’s so grating.