Ninjachick beat me to my favorite about the river in Philadelphia.
This one is getting flogged, my brother lives in Lonk-ister county PA, I live near Lang-caster NY. So it’s not an east/west coast thing it’s just those PA people.
Near Rochester NY there is Chili (Chi-lie) and Lima (Lee-ma)
I know you ain’t from Buffalo if you ever order Buffalo wings. We will look at you and say Buffalo’s don’t have wings, silly. Here it’s just “wings”
Love the Indian names around Buffalo. Tonawanda and Cheektowaga sound like they look, but Og help you with the pronouncing the Scajaquada Expressway.
I also want to add Waukesha, Wah-ke-shaw. Not wah-kee-shah.
Oh and here is one that pretty much trips up a non-native: Rio. that’s right Rio, Wis. Pronounced like the river? Duran Duran reference? Nope. Pronounced RI(long I) - oh. RI-oh.
Bellefontaine is “Bell-FOUNT-n”
Lima is “LYE-ma”
Cadiz is “CAY-diz”
Medina is “Me-DYE-na”
Vienna is “Vye-EN-na”
Berlin is “BER-lin”
The Scioto River is “Si-OH-to”, not “Skee-oto”
Toledo is “To-LEE-do”
Conneaut is “CON-ne-awt”
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is pronounced exactly the way you’d think it would be. When your town is called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, you don’t need any idiosyncratic pronunciations. However, natives can get through ‘Saskatchewan’ in just over 2 syllables instead of the usual 4.
Just what I came in to say, linty green. “Peabody” should be pronounced as if it has no vowels, and you’re just pronouncing the initial “P” as a letter (and as if there’s an “E” at the end):
P-b’d’ E
I’ll add that I once caught a book reading on tape as by an out-of-stater because he pronounced “Haverhill” as it it were “Haver Hill”. But the second “H” is slent:
Haver’ll
When I was younger I had a problem with “La Jolla” in southern California, pronouncing it as if it were an English word rather than Spanish, until I was gently corrected.
In upstate New York Chili and [N]Nunda** are usually mispronounced. In the former both "i"s rhyme with “sky”. In the latter, the “u” is short and the “a” is long and stressed.
There’s a town, and river/water system in Kansas named Marias de Cygnes. French origin, I believe. Anyway, I have not idea how it would be pronounced in French, but if you speak fluent Kansan it’s MARE-uh-duh-ZEEN.
“Oh, you’re from WaRshington?” - Yeah we warsh our clothes in the warsher
My own goof, when I first moved here I pronounced Puget (pyoo-get) Sound as “Poo-zhet” Sound. In my defense I was apparently channling the Pink Panther at the time.
WUSS-teh-sheh. (We don’t stress the r’s very much in English.)
Then you have:
Wymondham (WIN-dem)
Happisburgh (HAZE-burruh)
Tacolneston (TACK-uh-stun)
Bawdeswell (BORDZ-well)
Deopham (DEEF-um)
Garboldisham (GARBLE-shum)
the river Bure (to rhyme with “pure”)
and outside my home county of Norfolk there are:
Loughborough (LUFF-burruh)
Cirencester (normally as it’s spelled, but SISS-isster to certain antique ladies)
Mousehole (MOUZ-el) (not to be confused with Mousehold, in Norwich, which is pronounced exactly as spelled)
Frome (FROOM)
Gloucester (GLOSS-ter)
and in Wales:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwryndrobwyllllantisiliogogogoch (Don’t ask.)
(And yes, I have spelled that correctly, and it does have four consecutive ls in it.)
Ft. Meade has Canine Road: new folks put a doggie spin on the pronunciation, but anyone who has been there longer than a month knows that it’s pronounced kuh-NEEN.
In at least one episode of the X-Files, Scully complains about traffic on “the 95.”
I went to college near Philly and was going to post that one, too.
There are many names where I am from that are often mispronounced. My favourite is still the Miramichi. Everyone in NB I know pronounces it: “meer-a-mih-SHEE”. And I don’t know if it’s regional, but we often (but not always) put the word “the” before it.
When I was a teenager and working summers at the local factory, a politician (can’t remember for the life of me who) was coming through, introducing himself to “common folks” like us. He was very English. As in, no French accent (NB is a bilingual province). This isn’t much of an issue to anyone, except for him, apparently. Many of our French employees (most of them are from the Miramichi, Chatham, Tracadie, Rogersville, etc) had some questions for him. Some of them are very loud people. One of them accused him of not understanding much about the northern half of the province (the “French half” - inaccurate, but close enough). The fellow spluttered and said to her, “Why, I practically grew up in Meery-MEECHY! [the Miramichi!]”
He was laughed out. I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. I’d never heard anyone call it that before, until years later, on the Weather Channel.
I don’t laugh so much now, though. Since moving out here, I’m still trying to get my tongue around such acrobatic names as Puyallup, Skyhomish, Medina, Snohomish, weird names like Shilshole… etc. I’ve got most of them down by now, but they took some work. Some were just tongue twisters.
(Don’t ask.)