Lima, Ohio, is pronounced like the bean, not the city in Peru.
When it comes to mangling names from another language, few can beat the Marais des Cygnes river in Kansas. I don’t know how it is in French, but pronounced in Kansan it’s Mare-uh duh ZEEN.
What, no one uses “Valley of Smoke” anymore?
The snooty Indiana town, Carmel, is pronounced car-mull, in contrast to the snooty California town.
And the locals also refer to it as Carmel by the Interstate.
You can tell if you’re pronouncing Saskatchewan correctly by whether people not from there say, “Gesundheit!” in response.
There’s a road in Texas City called Vauthier. VAW-teer? VOH-tee-ay? Mais non, mes amis. The name is Cajun and pronounced “Vo-SHAY” I kid you not.
I can say Saskatchewan without starting to stutter.
You can tell who’s a tourist in NYC if they pronounce Houston Street like the city in Texas. (It’s HOUSE-ton Street.)
Residents call it Wetminter.
It’s not even a question of being “soft.” (In English, definite articles are normally unstressed for everything, anyway. No one in Southern California–or anywhere in the English speaking world–normally stresses definite articles. They are only stressed when one wishes to convey contrast.)
They DO say it in the Bay Area–I’ve lived in both areas, and the protest is just an affectation. Here’s an example from a traffic report from KPIX where she clearly uses the definite article (“the 880,” etc.). – “Let’s take a look at the eight-eighty in Oakland,” etc.
The people from the north who protest the use of the definite article are just being reactionary and not considering context. That’s because in Northern California it’s more common to use “I” when referring to freeways–but NOBODY uses the definite article when they use the “I,” whether in the north or the south. Just about nobody in L.A. says, “The I ten.” They usually just say “the ten,” but if they say “I,” they drop the definite article.
However, there’s some truth to the complaint, in that in the Bay Area, when the prefixes “westbound,” “northbound,” etc. are used, people in the north will drop the article, whereas many in the south will keep it.
And why is this? Obviously it’s because a single freeway extends across a longer distance in the perspective of more people in the south than in the north. Psychologically, therefore, a particular freeway has much more of an identity as an entity unto itself, rather than just one particular geographic place. This is part of the complexity of language use that those who complain about using “the” with freeways are just too simplistic to recognize.
SKOO-kle as far as I’m concerned but I didn’t live there. My parents grew up near there.
Dear Indiana folks, .
It’s Mini Ap O Liss. Not Minnianapplis. It does not rhyme with your pronunciation of Indianapolis.
And those from most anywhere else in the US: It is Chisago City. Not Chicago City. It is named for Lake Kai-Chi-Saga (now known pretty much as Chisago Lake).
Hey! I used to live in Puyallup! Although, I did butcher it horribly the first time I was there.
More a tourist thing than a pronunciation, but it’s called “San An-ton-EEO”, not “San An-TONE”. Say it wrong and somebody will try to sell you a pair of boots, to be picked up at North Star Mall.
You’ll call it delicious. You’ll call it remarkable. But, please, don’t dare call it jelly.
What the heck have I just watched?
A couple from Massachusetts that visitors rarely get right:
Peabody = PEE-bidee
Woburn = WOO-burn
And don’t forget Worcester=wooster.
Wallowa (county and mountains), OR is wuh-LAO-uh, not WALL-oh-wuh.
Valdez, AK is val-DEEZ, not vahl-DEZ. Kenai, AK is KEE-nye, not Kenny. There are a plethora of other Native names that I won’t try to go into.
Helena, MT is HELL-ih-nuh.
Sault Ste Marie, MI is soo saint marie, not salt saint marie, as my old American history teacher called it :rolleyes:.
Don’t forget Worcester (Wuss-ter).
As for the aforementioned Schuylkill, we always said Skoo-Kill.
There’s a town just outside of Knoxville called Maryville, and if you say it Mary-vill, someone will inevitably interrupt you and say it’s pronounced Mahr-vill. It’s happened so many times, my response is now “how about we just call it Fuck You” (well, just to certain people I know).
Worcester, Massachusetts is pronounced (/ˈwʊstər/ wuuss-tər)
It is NOT Warchester or Warsesster or Woosesster!
Unless you were born there then change the er at the end to eh:D
oops beaten by lost4life
As a result, I, a New Yorker, have to pause for about five seconds if I say the name of Houston, Texas because I have to parse out the correct pronunciation in my head.
Also in New York, I’ve never heard anyone call it the Big Apple in normal conversation. Cute business names (“Big Apple Deli,” “Big Apple Cafe”) are fine, no one blinks an eye. Maybe if lightly making fun of how it’s used by tourists. (I was recently visiting my mom in a small town, and was frustrated because none of the local businesses took debit cards and seemed to think it was an insane question when I asked – so eventually I said something – to my mom, not a cashier – “well gee, back in the Big Apple we have these crazy things called debit cards”) But I can’t imagine anyone using it in common speech to actually refer to NYC.