I would pronounce Van Whyk like the word “why” with a k at the end.
Guess how Thames Street in Newport, RI. is pronounced. 
Like Dick & Dyke. Sick and Psych. Mick and Mike. Lick and Like. Pick and Pike. Bic and Bike. Hick and Hike. Quick and… ok maybe not.
In my part of NY (mid-Hudson Valley), Van Wyck is basically always with a long I…Van wike, rhymes with bike and like and psych. Yes, I know there are many in NYC who would disagree, but here at least the long-I pronunciation is pretty well established.
I say Budapest, would say KY-per belt but don’t think I’ve ever heard it spoken so could easily be mistaken, and would only say HOWE-ston if referring to the Manhattan street.
Presumably one heavily weighted input would be how Mr Van Wyck chose to pronounce his name.
/vænˈwaɪk/
Unlike foreign place names, we do certainly tend to respect the way people choose to pronounce their own names, whatever the language of origin. But it still might drift away, of course, if the guy is long-forgotten as a public figure.
Okay, thank you. Is there a rule on when Y as a vowel is pronounced as a short I, Long I or Long e?
Well, if there are any rules that work for most ordinary English words, they wouldn’t apply to such a special case. In this case it’s originally a Dutch name that would be pronounced something like Fon Weig; and the American Robert Van Wyck chose not to say his name the same way as his Dutch ancestors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/nyregion/van-wyck-expressway-also-snarls-pronunciation.html?_r=0
La Cañada - it means “canyon”/“path” etc. and is unrelated to the country.
How do you pronounce it?
The way it’s spelled.
When in doubt I go with the locals for domestic locations. If there’s an English pronunciation of foreign locations I stick to that. If you can’t pronounce it exactly like a local then I think it’s pretentious to try to do it in the foreign language.
In English, I tend to say Budapest, unless I’m talking to Hungarian colleagues or people living there. In the expat community there, we said it with the “sh,” but back in the US I tend to default to the Anglicized pronunciation, just like I say Crack-ow instead of Krah-koof for Krakow, even though Polish was my first language. Sometimes it slips, and I say Budapesht. For Houston, it’s Howston for the New York Street and Hyooston for the city. The other two I don’t think I’ve ever used in conversation.
What about habanero? One of my peeves which I try to ignore as much as possible is when it’s pronounced (and even written) as if it’s got a “ñ” instead of a plain “n.” It’s not pronounced like jalapeño. It’s just a plain “n”!
Bruschetta: I prefer to say it “bruce-ketta,” although it’s been anglicized to “brew-shetta.”
Good post. I get really annoyed at the attitude that it’s somehow wrong to anglicize names in some cases while in others it’s fine. Thus we’re quite happy with Florence for Firenze or Munich for Munchen but insist on Beijing (most countries are still quite content with Peking or Pekin) and Don Kee-yot-ee instead of the traditional English pronunciation Don Kwik-sut, thus leaving the adjective quixotic stranded (who the hell says kee-yot-ic?)
Wojciehowicz.
I lived in Europe for a number of years and still tend to say Budapesht and Krakoof, but finally stopped saying Warshawa and Genève. With my wife, I say “Lishz-boa”, but that’s because we lived there and it’s a shared memory.
Peabody in MA is PEE-bud-dee.
Here in Portland, Couch St. is pronounced ‘cootch’, as it’s named after a Civil War officer.
In Alaska, the town of Valdez is pronounced ‘val-DEEZ’, even though it was named in 1790 after the Spanish Navy Minister Antonio Valdés y Fernández Bazán.
The Knik River and village in Alaska is pronounce ‘kuh-NIK’.
OR-i-gun is how we say it, unlike the town in Wisconsin, which is Or-i-gone.
The Willamette River is pronounced ‘will-LAM-ette’, not ‘WILLA-mette’.
Budapest is even further complicated by the U – do you say BEW-da-pest, or BOOT-a-pest? A similar dichotomy exists with reference to the capital of Romania, which, by the way, is called “ro-ma-NEE-ya” by Romanians. Bucharest, in English, is spelled Bucuresti by Romanians, who even have a diacritical mark under the S to enforce the pronunciation of “boo-koo-RESHT”. Trilled R, or course, but Americans feel perfectly at ease pronouncing foreign names with untrilled R. Very few languages have a phoneme that corresponds to the American R sound. Even British English doesn’t.
I think it is horribly pedantic, when Americans pronounce foreign names with foreign phonetics, such as bilingual native-Spanish speakers who are news reporters, who pronounce Spanish proper names with native Hispanic phonetics. When I am speaking Spanish, I would never say Los Angeles with an American drawl (just because I can), but I would say “loas ON-hel-ace” in conformity with the phonetics of the rest of the sentence.
Like when somebody from the middle east told Donald Rumsfeld that Qatar is pronounced “gutter”, and he made such a big deal about saying it that way. The fact is, the Q in Qatar represents a phoneme that Americans can’t say nor hear, and Rumsfeld was no closer to correct than people who say “kah-tar”.
More like PEE-b’dee. I’m always surprised how people have no problem pronouncing Worcestershire Sauce, but who stumble on Worcester (WU-ster, or WU-stuh as the locals would say)
Out here in CA you can never tell how much the Spanish names are anglicized, if at all. We say San Jose (ho-SAY), but then Los Angeles (AN-jell-iss). San Pedro (PEE-dro), the city, but then San Pedro Square in San Jose (PAY-dro). Es muy loco!
I used to work with a guy named Czumaj. It was pronounced shoo-ma.
Up unti last year, I thought the adjective was ‘kee-hot-ic’, until I looked it up and saw that the iiliterate idiots were right.
I had always also thought Keynesian was ‘key-NEE-zhun’, analogous to DeCartes ==> cartesian. No, the dictionary finally got around to listing it, and calling it ‘KAIN-zee-an’. Go figure.
Luckily, nobody ever actually SAYS those words.
True, although I don’t think I’ve heard American speakers say “BYOO-da-pest.” In my experience, it seems to be invariably “BOO” for the first syllable.