amlothi

I should be used to this, coming from the Northeast with towns like Leominster, MA (Lemon-stir), and Worcester (Woos-tah, or Wiss-tah for some locals).

Now I'm travelling and the local newscasters are talking about all the Arkansans (Ar-KAN-sans) here in Arkansas (Ark-en-saw).

Evidently, the state name is pronounced that way by law:

But if that's the case, why in the world wouldn't they call their residents Ark-en-saw-ens, or something?


Don't even get me started on Versailles, IN (Ver-sales).


Are there any other US places that FTers just can't make themselves pronounce like a local?

Or better yet, any Arkensawens care to explain your home state's fascination with not being like Kansas?

bitburgr

There's a Versailles, KY (Ver-sales) too. The locals explained it to me that when the city was founded, the Irish hated the French so mispronounced it on purpose, just to drive them nuts. Not sure if that's true...

bitburgr

Oh...

proper names that are pronounced counterintuitively

17thousandkm

There's a suburb up the road from me called Reservoir which for some reason the locals insist on pronouncing "Reserv-oar". As an expat Brit I have tried to reeducate them but to no avail.

Have also tried telling them you clean carpet by "hoovering" not "vacuuming", that the large purple shiny things are "aubergines" not "eggplants", and the colour is called "maroon" rather than "maroan" but find I get very short shrift

I've been here nine years now and every now and then I still come up against the "language barrier" despite the fact that the two nations apparently both speak English!

magiciansampras

My first trip to Australia I pronounced Cairnes CARNS.

EricH

How about Des Plaines, IL. Pronounced exactly like it's spelled, sort of.

17thousandkm

Did you at least remember the correct pronunciation for Brisbane: Brisvegas??

Oh, there's also Launceston (Tasmania) - if you pronounce it "Lawnceston" the locals get quite uppity - it's "Lonceston".

CPRich

There's Versailles, PA also, along with Charleroi (which starts out well, but collapses into Shar-le-roy) and Dubois (Dew-boys) - all of which perplexed my Belgian guests.

I still refuse to pronounce the 'r' in Washington, PA, as my mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, and other western PA native family members do.

(And I still get a chuckle from the FedEx commercial with a young kid trying to ship to "puh-hoe-nicks - you know, the capital of Arizona")

amlothi

I might understand this, if I had any clue what "shrift" is.

jackal

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sho2.htm

I grew up in Paso Robles, CA--full, legal name "El Paso de Robles" (The Pass of [the] Oaks--Oak Pass, I suppose).

I knew of no non-Hispanic people there who didn't pronounce it "PASSuhRUBBles."

stut

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

Visitors to Scotland must have a terrible time. For starters, there's Edinburgh, which perplexes many (Edin-bruh).

But as for Milngavie, Strathaven, Kirkcudbrught... (Mull-guy, Stray-vun and Kir-coo-bree), not so simple. And that's without even getting a 'ch' in there to mangle.

Still easier than Wales, though. It takes years of practice to get the 'll' sound. Visitors may struggle with Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch.

Aviatrix

My nearest airport is Norwich (NWI). KLM staff in Amsterdam generally know that it's pronounced "Norrich", but in most other places they will insist on telling me that my bag has been checked to "Nor-witch". Can't really blame them, I guess.

(Oh, and just to confuse the issue, there is another pronunciation, "Nah-rich", which is used (a) in Norfolk dialect and (b) by people making fun of Norfolk dialect)

garethmorgan

One of the little pleasures of life is hearing the attempts of the English, in particular, to pronounce Welsh place names.

The alphabet is very different, there are no X, Z, J or K; W and Y are vowels; written pairs of letters like CH, RH, LL, DD, FF all go into one square in crosswords or Scrabble and have specific sounds, so it's understandable.

When I was in college in Swansea in South Wales I remember two particular examples of being asked directions.

One lorry driver asked me how to get to 'Ruddy Deaf-Aid'

I needed a bit of time to work out Rhyd Y Defaid - pronounced 'Reed Er Day-Vide' and meaning ford of the sheep.

The other, which I had to see in writing before being able to help, was an enquiry for 'C. A. Ten'. Written I could see that it was Caio, pronounced Kye-Oh.

17thousandkm

I went to Uni at Swansea!!

I thought it very quaint when I was first there how signage everywhere is translated into Welsh.

I eventually found myself with quite a Welsh lilt - an interesting accomplishment for a "Saarf" London girl.

Now that I've been here in Australia nine years my accent and pronunciation has changed again so that I generally pass unnoticed amongst my fellow Aussies, as long as I don't lapse and say something like "traffic warden" when I mean "parking attendant".

thaidai

SQ some years back in biz Was asked Head sex mr huge ? i heard they ment head set mr hughes? also always love to hear the Balinese call out the Quantas flts in DPS