ElevatorEnthusiast

I mean, I was just sharing mine as I was surprised to see your data point. To me, "YOU stun" doesn't sound "Texan" necessarily. Frankly, that sounds like more of a Northeastern way of pronouncing it (if I didn't know that Houston in NYC is actually "HOUSE ton"). I haven't interacted with many Cajun folks, so perhaps that's where the pronunciation comes from? Most of my friends in Houston are either ethnically Hispanic, Asian (South and East), or European / White (however you want to describe it), and I have always heard "HEW stun" and was always taught in school in Texas about Sam "HEW stun" (yes, in Texas, you spend an entire year of History learning Texas History - for me, it was 7th grade). It could be that your family has just kept up with a more niche way of saying things as more interconnected communications, media, and immigration have led to pronunciation standardization.

This does remind of my dearly beloved Texas-born grandmother who always pronounced San Antonio as "San An TONE" - it always made the whole family chuckle - perhaps, that's why she kept it up :-)

Scots_Al

That's interesting, I had always associated the pronunciation HEW with English speakers from the U.K., while in my head at least, hearing Americans pronounce it as HOO.

Anyway, no international airports here, but for fun, some of the place names near me regularly get mangled, such as Milngavie (pronounced MULL-GUY), and Strathaven (STRAYVEN).

DenverBrian

I believe it's Dallas/Foat Wuth.

realworld

FLL - Official name is Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport at Dania Beach. They never call it that!

SPN Lifer

BOI = Boy see ≠ Boy zee

moondog

Often, the English pronunciations of foreign cities/countries are different than the pronunciations in native languages. This does NOT render them "incorrect". In fact, I find it pretentious when speakers insert Chinese pronunciations of Beijing or Shanghai (with tones, and all) into English sentences.

jrl767

significantly OT, but I find it particularly egregious when TV soccer announcers — particularly British and American — use *what they think* is the appropriate pronunciation of a player’s name, and it’s often nowhere close to how the individual actually says it

fastflyer

Exactly. Some of the names of cities south of the US border come across as highly pretentious when pronounced natively in the middle, for example, of the nightly US news broadcast. "San Salvador" seems straightforward, but with a significant Spanish accent it is almost unrecognizable. English speakers say 'Pair- is, not Pahr-ee. Sometimes the English word for a city name is spelled differently than by the home tongue: "Nuremberg" or "Moscow"

If the old name has fallen out of favor ("Peking" or "Calcutta"), there should be at least a lifetime of leeway for those who only knew the once-correct old city name in English.

Eastbay1K

Methinks this post is tainted with wine denouement. That said, greetings from Lah Gwa Dya.

ft101

They say neither of these if they are UK educated.

Carnforth

About 10-15 years ago KLM opened a short-lived route from AMS for Kyushu, Japan.
We started our journey from NWI (Norwich) and the young GA had clearly not encountered our final destination before and was having a struggle to pronounce Fukuoka in a non-embarrassing way.
I did come to her rescue by pronouncing it Foo-ku-oka (the accepted way) for which she seemed quite relieved.

FindingFoodFluency

How would you pronounce Shanghai in Wu?

moondog

The first syllable is a rising tone that is much closer to "sang" than "shang" (neither uses a nasal soft "a").

The second syllable is similar to "hi", but can have a hint of hard "a". It uses a falling tone, which is more exaggerated when followed by other non-falling syllables (e.g. 上海人). I've never studied that stuff in textbooks btw, and am not sure if they even exist/ed. So, what you're getting is an outside observer's attempt to describe it.

Davvidd

Have a look at the Ghanian comedian Akwasi Boadi reading out the football/soccer scores on YouTube.

Steve M

One time I had a ticket from Texas with connections eventually ending in Fukuoka (FUK). When confirming the destination of my checked bags, the check-in agent in Texas didn't even attempt to pronounce it.