Ne - vaaaaaaaaaa - duh

~snip~

No one knows exactly why Nevada is pronounced how it is, but it could have come from California miners who anglicized the word in the mid-19th century, Rocha said.

He's found recordings as far back as 1910 that have the pronunciation and disagrees that the way people from the East say the word sounds the way the Spanish pronounce it.

But what's more interesting than how Nevada residents say the word is why they react to people saying it differently, said Valerie Fridland, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies dialects.

Residents use pronunciation not only to determine who is a native to the state, she said, but who respects and cares about them. Fridland called it a "symbolic identity issue."

To residents, if visitors, politicians, or advertisers can't pronounce the state's name right, those people either don't have anything to offer people in Nevada or are offensively ignorant, according to Fridland.

"It's all about respect for people and the way they live," Rocha said.

~snip~