Finally got one not already posted (if my search went right this time).
Oregon.
No, I’m not talking about the awful way New Yorkers and such pronounce it. But the way an Oregonian pronounces it if you ask them how it’s pronounced. They’ll do a stretched out three syllable version. In real life it’s just two quick syllables: Or-gun.
There’s gotta be a whole subcategory like this: When people explain how something is pronounced they don’t give the pronunciation they normally use. I’ve met a lot of people who do this with their names. Not helpful.
You mean in Trana? Canadians always pronounce the t in often. My dictionary (vintage 1960) doesn’t even give that as an acceptable pronunciation variant. They pronounce schedule as shedule and lieutenant as leftenant. heaven only knows why. They also pronounce been as though it was spelled been, not bin. And even most Americans don’t know that creek is pronounced crick.
All of which illustrates why true spelling reform in English is impossible.
The only mispronunciations that drive me batty are when people pronounce another person’s name incorrectly even after hearing the other person say their own name. For example, at my last job I had a Mexican-American coworker named “Betuel”. He pronounced it “beh-TWEL”, but everybody looked at the spelling and called him “buh-TOOL”. In that workplace, literally the only people who pronounced it correctly were me and the developmentally-disabled woman. I mentioned this to my 71-year-old mother, whose knowledge of Spanish is limited to some classes in high school 50+ years ago, and she said, “How could anybody who knows anything about Spanish pronounce it ‘buh-TOOL’?”
Oddly enough, even our other Mexican coworkers managed to pronounce it incorrectly, which confirms to me that “not listening worth a fuck” is a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Let’s see … I had a hard time with my grandmothers when I was a kid. One was a college graduate, Master’s degree-holding schoolteacher, and the other was a Southern US-bred homemaker. The former would sternly correct me if I didn’t pronounce the “d” in “grandma”; the latter would get all het up if I did pronounce the “d”. So they were Grandma Eileen and Gramma Dick.
Hopefully, the same way I dealt with a British tourist here in Washington state who stopped me, pointed to a road map, and asked me how to get to the town of “CHEE-lan”. I politely just worked the correct pronunciation of Chelan into my answer: “To get to sheh-LAN, keep going up this road and take the first ramp onto the highway.”
The name of the city of Norfolk VA is properly pronounced NORfuck. Some locals pronounce it NAWfuck, which pisses me off no end, and some squeamish non-natives pronounce it NORfolk, which is just about as bad.
But by far the worst mispronunciation of a city name (again by the natives) is BAWmer for Baltimore. I think the every motor vehicle and building in the city should be egged nightly until the louts who live there have gone 12 months without goddam saying BAWmer.
I’ve heard “Geoffrey” and “Jeffrey” pronounced like the latter, and “Geoffroy” (with the O near the end) pronounced as “Joffrey.” Not sure how correct this is - it’s just what I’ve noticed.
