Ignorant local pronounciations that stick...

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  • bennettinfinity
    bennettinfinity Posts: 865 Member
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    Apparently in the mid-west they have problems with French pronunciations of French words. Particularly in the names of their cities and towns.

    I'm looking at you Versailles, Indiana (Ver-sales)

    Indiana ain't France... it's their town, they can say the name any way they want....

    Do you get upset when the people of New Orleans pronounce in N'awlins? Or Worcester, Mass is pronounced Wooster? Should the good folks in Paris, TX say they live in PARE-ee? (not if they don't want their respective *kitten* kicked)

    Language is local and the locals make the rules... if you want French names with French pronunciations, there's always France, or Quebec, or Haiti, or...

    Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

    You're right, but she would've pronounced it hamPster....

    But in all seriousness, don't you think it's at least a little condescending to say entire populations don't know how to correctly pronounce the name of their city?

    To paraphrase an often seen MFP quote:
    If you find yourself in Indiana, and one man says Ver-sales, he's wrong;
    But, if you find yourself in Indiana and *everyone* says Ver-sales, and you insist it's Vair-si, you're wrong.
  • ParamoreAddict
    ParamoreAddict Posts: 839 Member
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    Every single word spoken in Ebonics...
  • bregalad5
    bregalad5 Posts: 3,965 Member
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    OHH..and my wife hails from MOSS-CO, Idaho... Not to be confused with MOS-COW Russia... although they are spelled the same. kinda an old cold war wound I think. :)

    In Russia they pronounce it MOSS (though a bit more toward MAHS)-CO when saying the name in English. It took me a while to adjust when I first moved there. So, the people in Idaho are actually pronouncing it correctly :)
  • _John_
    _John_ Posts: 8,642 Member
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    I live in Iowa... and we have several towns with issues

    Nevada - pronounced ne-VAY-duh

    Madrid - pronounced MAA-drid

    but the worst by far is Tripoli - pronounced tri-POH-luh

    Yah! Totally know what you mean. Grew up in Iowa.

    Peru (down by Winterset) is pronounced Pee Rue.

    Stuart was pronounced Stert.

    I lived in Des Moines for several years. We pronounced it Duh Moyn. Anyone saying Dez Moinz is obviously an outsider.

    And yep on that too.

    Worked in Louisiana for a bit. A town north of Alexandria was spelled Natchichoches. It was pronounced Nak-O-Dees by the locals.

    I'm from about 100 miles northeast of Alexandria and I always heard Natchitoches as "nack UH tish".

    Alexandria itself was always interesting to me. Some from the area shorten it as "Elic" and it is often said as if it starts with E.
  • joet60
    joet60 Posts: 13 Member
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    I live in north eastern Pennsylvania......I could fill up this whole topic!....but one thing that drives me crazy is people skipping words....It's more prominent in western Pa.....like "my car needs fixed"......what about the "to be" in there?!?!....my car needs TO BE fixed!!!
  • QueenBishOTUniverse
    QueenBishOTUniverse Posts: 14,121 Member
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    Laughing my @ss off at Kuykendahl! I've never understood that one. Also, Ella blvd. and gracias (pronounced grassyass) you would think with the size of the spanish speaking population we have here that the pronunciation would get better, nope.

    ETA, Oil and Washer, pronounced ool and waRsher.
  • nurit1979
    nurit1979 Posts: 88 Member
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    I hate it when people say foyer like foy er instead of foy ay. Its a french word... silly me

    I do this..
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
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    I live in Iowa... and we have several towns with issues

    Nevada - pronounced ne-VAY-duh

    Madrid - pronounced MAA-drid

    but the worst by far is Tripoli - pronounced tri-POH-luh

    Yah! Totally know what you mean. Grew up in Iowa.

    Peru (down by Winterset) is pronounced Pee Rue.

    Stuart was pronounced Stert.

    I lived in Des Moines for several years. We pronounced it Duh Moyn. Anyone saying Dez Moinz is obviously an outsider.

    And yep on that too.

    Worked in Louisiana for a bit. A town north of Alexandria was spelled Natchichoches. It was pronounced Nak-O-Dees by the locals.

    Good to know. Natchichoches is a stop on a future road trip, so I'll try to blend (without the accent, it won't be so easy).
  • QueenBishOTUniverse
    QueenBishOTUniverse Posts: 14,121 Member
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    One more, Miami Oklahoma, pronounced Miamah
  • ccmccoy09
    ccmccoy09 Posts: 284 Member
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    Garnet Street in San Diego, pronounced locally as "garNET."

    It's definitely named after the gem -- the parallel streets are Emerald, Diamond, Chalcedony, Tourmaline, etc...

    But also Felspar St, which I think is a misspelling of the mineral feldspar.

    It took me a week after moving here to understand when people said "GarNET" they meant Garnet Street.
  • dpwellman
    dpwellman Posts: 3,271 Member
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    Any votes for nuclear or library

    Of course, I often mispronounce "foliage"-- as I used to call it derisively "foil-age" for messing up my golf shots.

    crayon -- I'm guilty of this one, too.
  • dwh77tx
    dwh77tx Posts: 513 Member
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    This isn't an incorrect pronunciation, but I dislike when people refer to a city by saying just the Area code like they are some hard gangster or something.

    OMG - LOL!!
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
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    Oh. I forgot!
    bruschetta - dated a woman who actually got in TROUBLE at work (waitress in upstate WI) for pronouncing it correctly. One would think restaurateurs would know better

    That's obnoxious of her employer(s).

    I used to go to a Tex Mex restaurant and order flautas with chipotle sauce, you had to specify which sauce was preferred and almost EVERY time I went, the servers would CORRECT me when I pronounced it properly...they said it with an "uhl" at the end like "cha-poat-uhl" WTF. Sometimes they were extra rude about it, too!! I was so annoyed by that every single time.

    I don't go there anymore and would rather have real Mexican food instead, but I keep wondering if it helped at all that we finally got a Chipotle (the chain) in town...I'd hope so...jeez
  • SunofaBeach14
    SunofaBeach14 Posts: 4,932 Member
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    Big Bob got Bounced for Burglary
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
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    They are not wrong pronunciations, they are unexpected pronunciations. Without shibboleths, how would you know who was local and who was a transplant?

    Around here we have Berlin and New Berlin, both pronounced BURR-lin. Also, Teutonia Ave is pronounce TIE-tone-yah
  • DenDweller
    DenDweller Posts: 1,438 Member
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    Language is local and the locals make the rules... if you want French names with French pronunciations, there's always France, or Quebec, or Haiti, or...

    Language is certainly dynamic. But, I don't know if your quote above is any more true than those who might insist the opposite.

    Instead, I prefer to think of language the same way as any other communication. It's an agreement between two or more people who want to present ideas to each other. It's an understanding of, to and from understanding.

    Not only are we trying to communicate solid facts and findings, but also more tenuous emotions and vague concepts. Sometimes we speak just for the art of the spoken or sung world. There has to be BOTH foundation and flexibility to make those various attempts at thought conveyance possible.

    So, no, I don't think it's purely up to the locals to say it how they want. But also, no, there is no one right to say a name correctly. In short, if you're looking for an absolute here, you're out of luck.

    There is only the agreement to understand what each other is saying. And, it makes language kinda...cool.
  • bennettinfinity
    bennettinfinity Posts: 865 Member
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    Language is local and the locals make the rules... if you want French names with French pronunciations, there's always France, or Quebec, or Haiti, or...

    Language is certainly dynamic. But, I don't know if your quote above is any more true than those who might insist the opposite.

    Instead, I prefer to think of language the same way as any other communication. It's an agreement between two or more people who want to present ideas to each other. It's an understanding of, to and from understanding.

    Not only are we trying to communicate solid facts and findings, but also more tenuous emotions and vague concepts. Sometimes we speak just for the art of the spoken or sung world. There has to be BOTH foundation and flexibility to make those various attempts at thought conveyance possible.

    So, no, I don't think it's purely up to the locals to say it how they want. But also, no, there is no one right to say a name correctly. In short, if you're looking for an absolute here, you're out of luck.

    There is only the agreement to understand what each other is saying. And, it makes language kinda...cool.

    That was more the point I was trying to make - thank you for making it so eloquently. :flowerforyou:
  • Willbenchforcupcakes
    Willbenchforcupcakes Posts: 4,955 Member
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    There are many streets with French names in Detroit. Everyone butchers them, and it drives me nuts.

    Canadian weighing in.....even though we are supposedly bi lingual we have a road here called Marquis de Lorne trail that everyone calls Markus de Lorne.

    Oh, and I live in Calgary, not CallGary :smile:

    I'd argue for Calgry as the native pronounciation.
  • BrainyBurro
    BrainyBurro Posts: 6,129 Member
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    Heh, please come to the city of Pittsburgh. Where words with "ow" sound are pronounced with an "ah" sound.

    Dahntahn, ftw.

    We have quite a few...quirks.

    Versailles. A French word, pronounced Ver-Si. We have East Ver-Sales. The French must loathe us.

    The one that I wonder about is Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie was from Pittsburgh, but was a titan of industry world wide. As such many places are named after him, New York for example. But everyone else pronounces it Car-nuh-Gee while we say it Car-Nay-Gee.

    I really hope everyone else is saying it wrong and not us.

    it is "Car-Nay-Gee". but i still pronounce it "Car-Nuh-Gee" because it sounds pretentious the other way.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/nyregion/fyi-019240.html

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