I spent a day exploring Mount Desert Island, on the coast of Maine. Most people pronounced the middle word of the name of the island as “DEZ urt,” like the Sahara. However, the guy behind the counter in the post office in Seal Harbor said the locals pronounce the word “duh ZURT,” like the after-dinner cake and pie. I have no reason to think the postman was pulling my leg, but I want to get verification since I had never heard the latter pronunciation used.
From http://m-w.com, both pronunciations are listed, but “duh-ZERT” is listed first.
It’s pronounced like dessert. Not desert. The people pronouncing it wrong were probably tourists. Like the ones in Boston who call it “Cope-ly” Square.
The island was first named Isle des Monts-deserts (literally, the “Isle of Bare Mountains”) by the French explorer Champlain. When this name was rendered into English as “Mount Desert Island”, the accent was placed on the second syllable–and rightly so, in my opinion. The sense in which Champlain was using the French word was more equivalent to the archaic English noun duh-ZERT (a desolate and sparsely occpied place) than to DEH-zurt (a dry place with sagebrush and sand dunes).
My favorite was PEE-body.