In Spain, Oviedo is ov-ee-ay-do. In Florida, it’s Oh-veedo (or ahveehda if you’re a bit of a redneck.) I expect there are other Oviedos in the Spanish-speaking world and probably elsewhere in the US, but I don’t know how they are pronounced.
Glasgow rhymes with cow in the US, because… well, because we don’t know any better.
Pretty much nobody but native New Orleanians get ‘New Orleans’ right.
It’s not New or-LEANS, and it’s not N’awlins. It’s also important to understand that the true New Orleans accent is not a southern accent, and it’s not a cajun accent, but it has its own unusual accent that, oddly enough, is closer to a Brooklyn accent than any other.
The right way to pronounce the city name is ‘new OR-lins’, with the ‘R’ sound subdued like a Brooklyner. The ‘new’ flows cleanly into the ‘OR’ sound.
Somebody will correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that most locals pronounce the middle vowel of Chicago like “aw” but most non-locals pronounce it like “ah.” Shi-KAW-go locally vs. Shi-KAH-go elsewhere.
A lot of locals seem to pronounce Toronto with two syllables, as if it were spelled Tronno.
I spent an evening talking to some Canadians that kept mentioning their home. Some area called ‘Noo Flun’. It took me 3 hours or so before I realised that they probably meant ‘new foundland’.
Locals: Boo-wee
Others: Boh-wee (as in David Bowie)
Friends from there have always told me “new-OR-lins,” but my favorite band is from there and they always say “new-OR-lee-uns” (they sing about New Orleans a lot). Is there a pronunciation divide among residents?
Is this pronunciation in a song, or is that how they say it when they talk? Because it’s often different in song, depending on the needs for rhymes/rhythm/syllables/etc.