Working in a call center, you find that place names are very common (since many cities are named after the same person or persons) but their pronunciations vary from one area to the next. I have noticed the following:
[ul]
[li]Lafayette – this seems to be the worst – pronounced lah-FAY-ut or Lah-fet in TN and the North, but LAH-fee-eht in LA and the West[/li][li]Lebanon – here in the South, it’s LEH-buh-nun, everywhere else, it’s leh-bah-NON[/li][li]One of my faves, Gallatin – pronounced GAL-uh-tin in the South, but gah-LAT-in in the West and North[/li][li]Cairo – pretty much everywhere it’s KY-roh, but leave it to Southerners to say KAY-row[/li][/ul]
Mundane? Check. Pointless? Check. Shared? Check. Have a lovely day
Nunda in upstate New York. Pronounced “NUN-day”. (It’s a transliterated Indian name, using a scheme no one else followed). I always wonder if they have a Nunda Hyundai, which no one who hadn’t heard either pronounced would guess it right.
They also have Chili in NY, pronounced “CHY-lie”
Out in Utah, Spanish Fork is pronounced “Spanish Fark”
Oh yes, I forget, my all-time favourite (because the people majorly suck ass – the ones that call here, anyway) is Monsey, NY. Pronounced MUN-see. And of course, Bah HahBah, ME.
Medford Massachusetts is pronounced by the locals as if the letter “D” never existed. “Meh’fuh” Haverhill, MA is “HAY-ver’ill” Peabody MA is pronounced as if it has no vowels, and you’re just sounding the consonants – “PEE-b’dee”
I understand that the Connecticutians, who have a New London, pronounce the name of the river it’s on, Thames, as if the “th” is soft and the “A” is long, like “themes” with a long A in it. But I’ve never heard this one myself.
ChiefScott’s post reminds me of the radio station where I worked in the '70s, in Haldimand-Norfolk county, Ontario. There, Norfolk is pronouced as spelled. Well, they ordered a jingle package from a company in Texas. When it came back, there were several jingles they could never put on the air, because the singers pronounced it Nor-fuck.
Some of the pronunciations of street names in New Orleans are a bit idiosyncratic, such as CAL-ee-ope for “Calliope.” My favorite pronunciation was see-el-ten for “Clio.” Took me a while to figure out the rationalization for that one (C-L-10). I don’t know how widespread it is, though.
[QUOTE=Litoris]
[li]Cairo – pretty much everywhere it’s KY-roh, but leave it to Southerners to say KAY-row[/li][/QUOTE]
I’ve read that Cairo, Illinois, is pronounced that way for real, KAY-row. Is that true?
Lima, Peru, is LEE-ma, but Lima, Ohio, is LYE-ma, because of the beans grown in the area. At least one movie failed to do research when a character said she was from LEE-ma, Ohio.
I remember bursting a fellow American’s bubble one time. He’d seen reference to Leicester in England and thought it terribly romantic until I pointed out it was pronounced “Lester.” Dunno how he thought it was pronounced, but he was not happy with the news.
