I’m sitting here listening to the evening news in the living room, and Peter Jennings just pronounced it “Missour-uh”, twice. I hollered to the couch potatoes, “Did he just say ‘Missour-uh’, twice?” and the couch potatoes said yes, and The Cat Who Walks Alone added, “He’s from Canada”, as though that explained it. :rolleyes:
I’m a Midwesterner born and bred and we always pronounced it “Missour-ee”. What do the Teeming Millions say?
-EE.
I live in the West.
[sub]Of Europe, so what?[/sub]
To quoth Grandpa… semi out of context
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I recognize Missour-uh”
As a kid born in St. Louis, and who often visits his grandmother there, Sani says it’s Missour-EE.
I’m from St. Louis and say “Missour-EE”. My grandparents, however, say “Missour-AH”. Strangely enough, they also called the type of dessert called a sundae (“sun-DAY”), a “sun-dah”. Weird.
-EE as long as I remember.
I’ll bet Dan Rather had a blast with that one on Election Night.
I’ve always pronounced it with a long e sound at the end. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I noticed peopled pronouncing it the other way.
I though people from MO pronounced it the other way (ending in an uh sound)…
EE for me!
‘course news people always like to change the way words are pronounced. Remember "hair’-us-ment". Bastards think they know everything!
the cat who walks alone is quite correct. he is from canada, and that does explain it. it took him years to stop saying bean instead of bin (been), and don’t ask him what the last letter of the alphabet is.
on the mighty mo question, my dad (from ne) said “uh”, he also said “ill-a-noise” for the land of lincoln.
-EE.
I’m from Kansas City originally and a lot of people in Missouri do prounce is “-uh” but I think it tends to be the older population. I have no clue why.
Tibs
There was an article about it in the Wall Street Journal several years ago. There conclusion is that -ee is wrong. My geographical dictionary has two pronunciations, neither of them -ee. In the first pronunciation, the final syllable is the same as the vowel in ill. In the second pronunciation, the final syllable is the same as the first syllable of abound. Reading that article made me change my pronunciation from -ee to -ih.
After reading the article, I looked up the names of the other 49 states and changed my pronunciation of “Oregon”, “Hawaii” and “Louisiana.”
I should mention that other dictionaries do list the -ee pronunciation first.
If I remember the WSJ article right, I think they said the reason behind the -ih or -ah is the French pronunciation of the name.
Native of CA, always pronounced it as -EE.
Though, if you wanted to be mean, you could say it was -UGH.
(But that would be mean, and I’m not mean! Am I? Nope. Not me!)
It seems anchors, professors, and other such docented dipshits believe that whichever of any two possible pronunciations is less common is somehow more erudite than the flatly homogenized intonations of the American lumpenproletariat.
So we end up with sexual “Harris-ment”, an Argentine rhyming with shine, or Missour-uh instead of Misour-ee on the nightly news. Its the same syndrome that causes otherwise WASPy anchors to attempt pneumatically overblown Spanish pronunciations of anything Latin American; even if its a name from Brazil, where they do not speak the Castillian Idiom.
See what damage dictionaries do to an impressionable mind.
I’m from IL, about 90 miles from St. Louis, and I say -EE. My dad, born in Oklahoma, says -UH, as do almost all of his relatives.
–tygre
got one from NM here and I say it -EE
Missourian with 10 year pedigree.
Any of these are fine:
Misery
Missou-RAY
Missou-REE
Missou-RUH
MIZ-ruh
Miz-UR-uh
Miz-UR-ee
Basically, however the hell you slur it is acceptable.
–Tim
Homer, I just may flame you for this, 
These are NOT fine. With the exception of the 4 years I was in the Air Force, I’ve lived all 27 years of my life in St Louis, Missour-EE.
Misery is just being a smart-ass.
Never heard anyone say Missou-RAY, but would have to slap if I did.
Miz-ruh hurts my ears just reading it!
And on and on.
Homer, you are obviously NOT a St Louisan, or you never would have posted that. Pronouncing Missouri any other way than Miz-ur-ee (ok, ok, Missou-ree can be acceptable) is a pet peeve around here, same as calling this city St Louie. Do NOT call it St Louie. Only people from out of town call it St Louie. The only time that pronunciation is acceptable is if you’re singing that stupid song.
I find that it’s the urban areas that pronounce the state’s name correctly, and the rural areas that f*ck it up.
And to hopefully educate eveyone on the proper pornuncitaion of my homestate, let’s use another state as an example:
Missouri ends in the same letter as Mississippi.
I’ve never heard anyone pronounce that state’s name as Mississipp-uh.
Sounds stupid when you pronounce it that way, doesn’t it? Same thing when you pronounce Missouri that way, it sounds f*cking stupid.
Sorry to get my panties in a bunch over this, but it really is a pet peeve of mine and I heard them mangling it during the election coverage (I wanted to call that jack-ass and tell him the RIGHT way to say it) and then during 3 MOnday Night Football games, hearing those idiots in the booth mangling both the city and state pronunciations.
So I’m all done now. Remember: Pronounce it Missou-ree or Miz-ur-ee and never ever call the city St Louie, or feel the wrath of the Frog.
I live in Kansas City and often say “Misery.”
But to be serious, I say the -EE as well.
Bibliophage, I’ve never heard anybody pronounce it “Missour-ih”. It’s always been either a real sharp “ee” or a sort of dropped syllable, “uh”. (Actually, come to think of it, it’s “ruh”, “MiZUrah”.)
Besides, what about the song, “Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you, way, hey, you rolling river…” with the last line, “Cross the wide Missour-eeeeeeee”. With the other pronunciations, you’d have to sing either, “Cross the wide Missour-uuhhhhh” or “Cross the wide Missour-iiihhhhhh”. “Eee” is much easier for kindergarteners to sing.
Rocking Chair–you may inform your father (tactfully, out of respect for his gray hairs 
) that it’s “Illinoy”, not “Illinoise”. And BTW, P.J. still says “bean”. :rolleyes: