this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Pronouncing local place names. Lots of scattered areas here with place names that are spelled like other places names (for example we got a town called Egypt, a town called Binghamton, etc.) except that they're all pronounced differently. For example, we have a town called Leicester, named after the actual Leicester, and locals tend to raise an eyebrow when someone asks "how do you get to lester" (that would be the normal way to pronounce it)?
"Who's Lester? Is he the new guy in town?"
"What? No, the town."
"That's Leesester, not Lester."
"I'm sorry, wut?"
I of course just add to the confusion if I'm the one to break the news, as I have a Kiwi accent, which is atypical around here. So it becomes a "what do you know" kind of interaction.
There’s a place in Colorado called Buena Vista, yes, named in Spanish for good view. The locals all state that it’s Spanish. But they want it to be unique, so no, it’s not pronounced bwena. It’s fucking pronounced byunah. They literally know they’re pronouncing it wrong, they claim that it’s Spanish, and then they still say you’re pronouncing it wrong if you actually say it correctly.
There's a city in Kentucky called Versailles. Pronounced, you guessed it, vur-sails.
The capital of South Dakota is spelled "Pierre" and pronounced "Pier" like the thing ships pull up to.
And in California, the J, but not the LL, in "Vallejo" are pronounced as in Spanish. "Va-lay-ho".
haha you're joking. 🤦
I remember reading a Bill Bryson book, in which he mentioned a town (in Iowa, I think?) spelled Cairo, but pronounced cay-roh.
I briefly lived in a place with some very unintuitive place names that I had no idea how to say.
Problem is that unless it's a very large area, there's often not an easy way to look up how local place names are pronounced.
I remember for some of the places, I had taken to searching on YouTube hoping to find local news reports where they said the name out loud lol.
Imagining you looking up this video
Lmao. It's not quite that long, but there is a river nearish to me with a bizarrely long name. I tried looking it up one night and could only ever find people abbreviating it! So I'll never know how the full name is pronounced lol. Maybe no one else knows either.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/fHxO0UdpoxM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Ruairidh: "Rory"
Featherstonehaugh: "Fanshaw"
Where I live basically every location is some combination of "French, native American, English, Scandinavian", "pronounced natively or not", and "spelled like it's pronounced or not".
The fun ones are the English pronunciation of the French transliteration of the native word.