City Spellings/Pronunciations that do not make sense:

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I'll start:

Natchitoches, LA

The locals pronounce it NAK-uh-tish (I've also heard NAG-uh-dish, but the same idea...)

What City spelling and pronunciations weird you out?

Is that right?

but man...

There's a city in NE Arkansas called Blytheville.

Well, that's just a lot of unnecessary letters. They call it BLY-vuhl.

When someone says BLYTH-vihl, you know they 'ain't from around these parts'

no problem there.

Hearing people say "NAK-uh-tish" was so damned annoying....

:grr:

:D

which is from the same origin (Nacog. and Natch. were twin brothers) is pronounced like it looks, I believe.

Very strange.

Crazed Lousianians, et al. :eyes:

:P :P

Edit to take out the "t." I think it's correct now.

I grew up in So. California. When I moved here and saw "La Plata," I said, "La Plah-ta"

-- and I was corrected: "It's pronounced 'La Play-ta'."

How effing stupid. :eyes: It irritates the living shit out of me.

Sigh.

like the "ang" in angle instead of the usual Spanish pronunciation. Specifically, Jack Webb on the old "Dragnet" show. So cut the poor Marylanders a bit of slack, Bertha my dear. :*

What an incredibly fantastic film.

Anyway, she pronounced it "Los Ann G'leez."

Slack... oh, all right. ;)

My worst pet peeve is "Ne-vadd-uh" and "Colo-radd-uh" for "Ne-vah-duh" and "Colo-rah-duh."

:pals:

looks like you and i each have a new friend :pals:

oh, god, i turned into a pumpkin an hour ago

'night, all

PS Speaking of Nevada: I went to Reno on job training many years ago. Saw my favorite bumper sticker ever. None has ever eclipsed it for that title. It read:

WELCOME TO NEVADA
CALIFORNIA'S DESIGNATED SMOKING AREA

:rofl:

The question you are probably asking is "Well what the **** else would you drive through there on?"

:spank:

I wondered how the locals pronounced it. I never had to stop for gas there and the liquor stores up the road are drive through...so then there is that :rofl:

Nice stoplights though.

They're talking about a Waldorf bypass for commuters. By the time it gets out of infinite committees, environmental impact studies, nimby rallies, etc., Mrs. V. and I will be long-gone from here. Sigh.

and the locals pronounce it "Rye-oh Grand". :wtf:

But then again they may call Dr. Frankenstein's assistant "Eye-gor", too.

Or is that "Frahnk-en-steen"?

There's also one in NJ. Don't know how they pronounce it tho'.

"Bill-ux-ee" (Biloxi), Mississippi

Kosciusko (koz-ee-OZ-koh)
Pontotoc (PONT-uh-toc)
Sebastopol (I don't know this one)

Saucier = "So-shuh" - Gautier = "Go-shay" (ONE of these HAS to be wrong!)

We're not French (his family was from Quebec) but we pronounced it GO-chee-AY

Just can't get "Wooster" out of it, no matter how hard I try. :shrug:

They've got a ton over there. i.e. Gloucester (GLAH-ster)

It's just that the words and my brain don't work well together...I kinda short circuit for a second. :)

I'm currently in a seventeenth-century British history class, and it always takes me a second to adjust to all the names of the counties. :hi:

by Dave Barry
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To their credit, some countries have made a sincere effort to adopt English as their native language, a good example being England, but even there you have problems. My wife and I were driving around England once, and we came to a section called "Wales," which is this linguistically deformed area that apparently is too poor to afford vowels. All the road signs look like this:

LLWLNCWNRLLWNWRLLN -- 3 km

It is a tragic sight, indeed, to see Welsh parents attempting to sing traditional songs such as "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" to their children and lapsing into heart-rending silence when they get to the part about "E-I-E-I-O." If any of you in our reading audience have extra vowels that you no longer need, because, for example, your children have grown up, I urge you to send them (your children) to: Vowels for Wales, c/o Lord Chesterfield Parliament Luckystrike, the Duke of Earl, Pondwater upon Gabardine, England.
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in British English than any other language I can think of. For instance, the surnames Cholmondeley (pronounced 'Chumley'), Featherstonehaugh (pronounced 'Fanshawe'), and Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham'), Belvoir (pronounced 'Beaver'), St John (pronounced 'Sinjin'), Mainwaring (pronounced 'Mannering'), Bohun (pronounced 'Boon')...

Then when it comes to place names, you have Reading in Berkshire (pronounced 'Redding, Barkshire'), Bicester ('Bister'), Wymondham ('Windam'), Woolwich ('Woolich'...in pretty much any place name ending in -wich or -wick the 'w' isn't pronounced)...

You Might Be British or a Masshole IF> those pronounciations make perfect sense to you.

Another one that stumps visitors is Haverhill.

It's not Have-r-hill... it rhymes with save-rill.

pronounced "Limster." "Beaulieu" is "Bew-lee."

The ground over there must be littered with dropped syllables.

MA is good with these crazy pronounciations:

Leicester = Lester

Chelmsford = Chemsfed

Quincy = Quinzee

There was a great lounge discussion among Mass. folk about the pronounciation of Worcester and the contenders were 'Wusstah' and 'Wistah.'

Peabody = PEE-biddy
Medford = Meffid.
And then there are the 'hams....

Mehfuh, sort of.

I think you have to be from Medford to get it exactly right.

I stand corrected. But the girls had bigger hair in Somerville.

there is some wicked good Italian food there!

the italian bomb with extra hots and the meatball sub with extra provolone. Oh how i miss Bobs.

Gotta love regional variation when it comes to pronounciation. I'm not from NE, but I'm a Blues fan, and their farm team is up there. I just prounounce it the way our Canadian announcers do. :hi:

They were mocking other banks that had "out of state" home offices. The script had a woman with a heavy southern accent saying, "Woostah, how y'all spell Woostah?". :rofl:

I'm a midwest hack. The only way I hear it is through the mouths of Canadian play-by-play announcers. :D

pronounced HYEW stun, instead of the much more logical "Shitty, stinking town full of republican scum"

but somehow they got me on the right plane anyway.

Street, but somehow in Texas it becomes "HEWS-ton." Go figure.

And that's how he pronounced his name. Most of the other Houstons are probably named after other Houstons.

I attended South Houston Jr High School & South Houston High School in the Pasadena school district. (All in the Greater Houston area.) Since Gilley's closed, Pasadena has mostly been known for its refineries. Both schools were sometimes called "SoHo."

Some years ago, I visited NYC. At the time, the area south of "Howston" street was newly chic. Every time I saw a sign like "SoHo Clothing"--advertising a shop for the tragically hip--I cracked up. The "SoHo" I knew may have been tragic--but it was never hip.

I'm with you, BW. It's a sacrilege.

And you and I know it's San Jacinto, with a real J at the beginning of the second word, don't we? I've been up that tower many a time.

Redstone

:shrug:

but what an awful place it is. I actually prefer Detroit to Houston and Detroit barely qualifies as civilization anymore.

:-)

:toast:

:thumbsup:

PS: Detroit is the worst city in the US, and I've been to most of the large cities in the country.

:)

Lull vull (how natives pronounce it)

also

Lua vall

for New Orleans.....


'cept you don't really pronounce the "r" - just sort of a passing reference, if'n you know what I mean....

:D

Uptown (above Canal St.): N'orlins; Downtown (below Canal): N'awlins

Can you tell I've been away too long? :-)

city. You can tell a native Kentuckian by the way we say it.


But Versayles just cracks me up and always has.

Other great O-hi-yuh city pronunciations

MY-lan, for Milan, Ohio

LYE-ma, for Lima, Ohio

Sequim is pronounced "Squim".

or however the fuck it's spelled too.

But the challenge is to pronounce it correctly! :hi:

a city called Guin. And just up the road, there's a city called Gu-win. I always wondered if the town split over a pronunciation argument.

It's pronounced my-am-uh.

The Heberts who live thare say their names "A bear".

I lived without the middle syllable for decades - my family is really guilty of it as are most long time older residents.

I miss my hometown, but I love it here in Vegas!

Me, too. I had a friend from Columbus, OH, who said it was pronounced "Clumbus," like "Bufflo."

damn, I loves me some Buffalo.

I am so fond of the old hometown.

Redstone

There are a few other screwy ones in Maine, I'm sure....

Mexia: muh-hey-ya
Seguin: suh-geen
Bexar: bear

on this thread. Seguin. SiGEHn (soft i)

See also: Llano.

Forked River (fork-ED, 2 syllables)
Navesink (NA-vuh-sink)
Guttenberg (GUTT-en-berg, not GOOT-en-berg)
Cheesequake (it's supposed to be CHESS-quick, but most people pronounce it the way it looks now).

In NY:
Copiague (CO-peg)
Islip (ICE-lip)

I believe Connecticut's Thames River is pronounced "Thames", not "Temz" like in England.

name "Cheesequake" came from? I've been wondering about half my life about that, and nobody seems to know.

Redstone

"Cheesequake State Park got its unusual name from a word of forgotten meaning from the Leni-Lenape Indians who fished and hunted in the area long ago."

http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/parks/loc50.htm

Cheesequake Park itself (located in the Cheesequake section of Old Bridge Township) is a really nice park, too, except they rape you for admission on summer weekends ($10 to get in and park).

Pronounced "Pyoo-al'-upp", not "Poo-yall-upp".

Beatrice is South of Lincoln. Norfolk is North of here.

Beatrice, that is
but you don't think there's anything odd about Kearney?

You mean Kearney isn't supposed to be pronounced as Carny?

They shoulda gone the other way because the funny pronunciation would stick in people's heads. Poulan chain saws and Schoep's ice cream did ads making fun of the fact that nobody could pronounce their name. Schoep's ice cream was founded by my in-law Edward Schoephoerster so his real name was even harder to pronounce.

and yeah, if Kearney is going to be pronounced Carny, then why do they need two e's, especially the first one - tea is not prononce tah, beat is not pronounce bat nor is heat pronounce hat feat fat leap lap treat trat meat mat create crat deal dal real ral meal mal near nar fear far bear ... ooops

Godda-ming (am I correct Brits?)

Loughborough - Luff-borough

Leicester - Lester.

Kirkcaldy - Kircoddy.

All of the Scottish -burghs - and then one gets so used to it, that one wants to pronounce Pittsburgh as Pittsborough :eyes:

Americans place-names tend to have freakish spellings Mass.... for example - but we Brits have totally have the market cornered in irregular pronunciation.

Plus - the new leader of the Liberal Democrats over here is Sir Menzies Campbell - pronounced Mingis.

and you better not pronounce it LEE-ma

Spelled Hurricane

It's near Allentown, PA. Allentown is easy to pronounce, but Schoenersville is SHAY-ners-ville. It's always fun to hear some of the people on the local Clear Channel stations mangle pronunciation because they're not from the area.

Mantua (Manaway).

PA place names:
Dubois (Do-boys), North Versailles (versales)

Isn't that near L'inkster? (Lancaster)

It's always fun to tell the mere sports fans from the actual locals.

It's Sear-a-cuse, not Sara-cuse.

Fu'ton (Fulton) and 'Swego (Oswego)

pronounced U-gee and Mebane, NC, pronounce May'bin.

As you probably know there is a Huger St. in Columbia.

When I was a student at USC I overheard an out-of-state student say, "I've been along every block of that street and I can't find that huge E."

Not to mention Legare. (La-gree)

Horry County - the way it looks like it's pronounced versus they way it is pronounced.

For those of you who are not from SC, it is pronounced one of two ways: 'oh-ree' or 'or-ree'.

you Pennsylvanians needn't get all puffed up with town names like Eighty Four, Intercourse, Bird-in Hand, and King of Prussia.

Des Plaines is pronounced phonetically ("diss-playnz" or "dess-playnz") and not "deh plahn" from it's French origin.

"deh plenne"

And it's not just French origin,that is an actual French name.

which I have often heard pronounced "Pehnd Ore-e-al" instead of "Pondoray" but mostly by drunk people.

Its not: NOR-FOLK, its either NAH-FUK or NOR-FUK.

mikey_the_rat

juvenile, of course.

Sounds like a great hotel.

though La Jolla isn't a separate city, it's a district of San Diego, and I don't even live in La Jolla, it still bugs me. It's pronounced "LA-HOYA." Also people who think it means "The Jewel" in Spanish, and this is just something real estate goofballs dreamed up. It means "The Hollow" in an Indian language.

Jamacha is Ham A shaw. language barrier there I guess.

the major avenue Gratiot is pronounced GRASS- shit.

A famous local commercial was for GRASS -shit Auto Supply, with the impossibly busty Linda Vaughn doing the honors.

Lahser, another major street, is pronounced almost universally as Lasher.

There is no "Z" in Boise!

I got corrected by locals, and I took french in HS, lol!

and Louisville is pronounced - Loo-ah-vuhl instead of Lou-eee-ville. there's even a t-shirt to tell you how to pronounce it... it looks like it's up for debate, but anyone from there will tell you it's Loo-ah-vul.

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/allpro2/greatlooeylu.html

Same way as what you said. Bugs me.
The Professor

I think it's German.

Tucson.

I mean, what the fuck? :shrug:

Manor (outside of Austin) = MAY-ner

Weslaco (in the Valley) = WES-luh-ko

dg

Solgohachia (saw-guh-HATCH-ee)

That's VALDEEZ for you Outsiders, but I guess the old EXXON VALDEZ taught you that.

Rhyming with "plague".

I have no fucking idea why...:eyes:

Cairo, GA is pronounced KayRoh, Ga.

DeKalb County, GA is pronounced DeeCab, County.

furriners always wanna say "pee-air" whereas to locals it is "peer"

Norfolk, Ne is pronounced Norfork
Kearney, Ne and Kearney, Mo are both Carny with two totally useless e's
Muscoda, Wi is rhymed with 'day' instead of 'duh' like a musical 'coda'
Gotham, Wi is not Goth-am like Batman's town it is Goe-thum.

So says the hot girl from there who I used to hit on all the time. :) Well, kind of like a combo of "Preskitt" and "Preskutt." Somewhere in between those.

How do you pronounce Puyallup. Is it pooh yal up?
Nevada is pronounced Nev A Duh in Mo but Nev Ah Duh in the state of Nevada.
Wilkes Barre-- How do you pronounce that one?
Uwchlan--How do you pronounce that one? Is it Ukelan.

is pronounced "wilks barry."

Rodeo in California is pronounced correctly with Spanish pronounciation (as it does come from the Spanish language) Ro Dey-o.

La Canada in California is pronounced with the Spanish Pronounciation La Can ya da. (as it does come from the Spanish language) However I do not not know what Canada means in spanish.

Perris in California - it is spelled "Perris" but you usually see Paris.

:D

Always thought it was pronounced Bil-OX-see until Katrina came along and all I heard was Bil-UX-see.

Was once asked directions to "Sih-TOO-it" (MA) and was totally confused until I realized that they meant Scituate (SITCH-oo-it).

Minnesota:

Wayzata = Wy-ZEDDA
Mahtomedi= Motta-MEE-dye
Shakopee=SHOCK-a-pee
Lake L'Homme Dieu=Lake La Homma Doo
Lake Mille Lacs=M'LACKs

and one of the main streets of downtown Minneapolis is "Nicollet" or "NICK-let." I recently heard a new arrival say "Nicka-LET."

Oregon:

Yachats=YAH-hots
Estacada= Esta-KAY-da
Tualatin= Too-Walla-tin
Clatskanie=Clats-ka-NY (rhymes with "pie")

In Portland, the street spelled "Kearney" is pronounced "Kurny" by native Portlanders.

and it's will-lam-et damnit.

don't forget Couch (kooch) street.

or Gervais (Jer-Vis)

Duh! I lived near Couch Street.

CUD-uh-hay

Pronounced Skwim...... Beautiful place....But the name makes me think of rotting baby fish.

That one always made me nuts.

Then there is Lafayette which can be pronounced several ways.