This comes mainly from the days when my brother worked as a telephone directory assistant and quite a few of the callers couldn’t get the pronunciation right on the names of some California cities. For example:
They’d ask for “Serritoss”; they meant Cerritos.
Van Nooies (Van Nuys)
Bree (brie?) (Brea)
Granola Hills (Canoga Hills)
Slime-are (Sylmar)
Placenta (Placentia)
The two towns I refer to, collectively, as my hometown.
Stewey-viSANT. (Stuyvesant, pronounced STY-visant.)
Val-a-tie. (Valatie. It’s pronounced Valayshuh. It would be easier to pronounce if it were spelled Valatia, but it comes from the Dutch valletje or something like that, so that’s where the spelling and pronunciation came from, I suppose.)
At my alma mater, the University of Maryland at College Park, there is a building called Taliaferro Hall which is oddly pronounced “Tulliver.” You can also tell the frosh from the sophs when they come up to you and ask where Tally-a-fair-o Hall is.
You can tell the freshmen from the sophmores around here when they talk about the nearby city of Aptos. For some reason, it is pronounced “Ap-toss” instead of the more common and more intuitive “Ap-tose”.
First, let’s start with the name of the state in which I reside.
Oregon.
It is surprising how often I hear this name butchered by non-Oregonians, particularly those who live east of the Mississippi.
It is pronounced “Orygun”, not “Ory-GONE”.
I’ve also heard a less-common butchering of the state name, which I’ve heard only on CNN Headline News. On occasion, some dimbrain will refer to the state as “AR-uh-gun.” AAAGGH!
Another mispronounciation I’ve often heard is the name of the river that flows northward through the Portland metro area. It’s the Willamette river, and the proper way to pronounce it is on the second syllable, not the last. It isn’t “Wil-uh-MET”, it is “Wil-LAMM-ette”, dammit!
Oh, and this is a special note for HubZilla. There is a place in the western suburbs of Portland called Aloha. It isn’t a formal metropolitan area per se. I graduated from the high school there…Aloha High School. In Aloha, Oregon, the name is pronounced “a-LOW-uh”, not “A-LOW-ha”.
There’s a reason for it, but it’s getting late and if you’re really interested I’ll dig up the answer for you.
There are a lot of Iowa towns that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, so we can spot the city folk, I assume. I find them very amusing.
Nevada is Ne-vay-da
Delhi is Del-high
Tripoli is Try-po-la
Cambridge is Cam-bridge, short ‘a’ sound
Madrid is Mad-rid
and in Kansas there is an Arkansas river pronounced Are-kansas, I think Arkansas needs a river pronounced Kan-saw, spelled Kansas…
There’s a town here in Tn. that makes me cringe when I hear the locals pronounce it.
Lafayette - most people would say La-fee-ET, but around here it’s
La-FAYet.
Another one from Hawaii. Nearly everyone, even long time residents, pronounce it Hanalulu. When the O in the Hawaiian alphabet is always pronounced oh. So it’s Ho-no-lou-lou.
From Arizona, this one the locals are real picky about. It may be spelled saguaro but it’s pronounced sahuaro. And it’s also not Tuck-son either.
I am loathe to describe the pronunciation for my street name. See, it’s a great test for mainland telemarketers-- they can never say the name correctly.
There’s a very popular street here called “Manchaca,” yet everyone pronounces it “Manchac.” Somehow, no one notices the extra A at the end.
I live off of Burnet. I prounouce it “Burn-et,” along with a third of the people in town. Another third pronounce it “Burnit,” while the final third simply call it “Burnt.”
I’m not even going to get into all the German or Hispanic named streets and their mispronunciations. I don’t get people in Texas.
