One I frequently get a chuckle about is the Pennsylvania Dutch area near Lancaster.
You won’t see very many people in wooden shoes there. These are German descendents, i.e. The Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsch)
Now, is it LAN-Caster or LANK-ister? (I prefer the former)
Cheers, Ed
You left out Okeechobee…
Sheldon
You may prefer the former, but it’s wrong.
Correction: Sam Houston may have been from Virginia, but he himself pronounced his surname, “Hyoo-ston.” Houston Street in NYC was actually named after someone else - William Houstoun (pronounced, “how-ston”), a lawyer and member of the Continental Congress.
Well, I live pretty close to there, I can be at the Strasburg Rail Road in less than an hour, and in Lancaster City in an hour and 20 minutes.
We deal with the PA Dutch (Amish) all the time, some of them built my deck 25 years ago. And while they all speak good English with their own unique accent, they also speak a version of German that is somewhat frozen in time from about 1720.
They don’t own or drive cars, but they will pay the “English” to drive them to a construction job and just sit there all day while they work.
The people in Lancaster PA, and in this region, mostly say LANK-ister.
Sheldon
And Ichetucknee…
Well, I could not make an exhaustive list… we have hundreds of cities with Native American names that are difficult for tourists to pronounce.
-Kevin
There is only one way, because the tradename is derived from ‘box spoke’. 'Twould make no sense to say ‘pock’ except if you did not know the derivation…
There are plenty of people who cannot spell ‘Walschaerts’ either – some of whom attempted to game the system by proposing that we simply term it ‘Walschaert’ for simplicity. Like the Post Office arbitrarily simplifying ‘Pittsburgh’ for a few years, or later requiring weird address syntax to suit their early OCR systems.
I only mentioned Okeechobee because my mother lives there…
Sheldon
Just never ask a New Yorker where “hew-ston” street is.
And some of those clever sounding neighborhoods? SoHo just means SOuth of HOuston.
–Randy
The dormer is a town in England, and also a WWII bomber. The latter is how we actually say it here.
The rivers around here may carry Native American names, but the towns are purely invented by the PA Dutch (when not named after English ones - or Welsh ones when you get just outside Philly). I mean, Bird-in-Hand, really? And the one that starts with Blue (not Blue Bell, that’s a different town, and merely a flower).
Amazing how many people want to say “reading” like something you do with a book. It’s “redding”. Californians apparantly had to spell it phoenetically to pronounce it properly.
–Randy
Take a try at Chicago, my hometown.
Rich
Here in the Mid Atlantic it’s a soft “ch” like "su"gar.
Sheldon
My wife and her family are from the Chicago area, and they cannot agree how to pronounce it.
-Kevin
Isn’t it “Shi-COG-ah”? In southern OH the big city is pronounced “Sin-sin-NA-tah” by the locals.
In fact, there are a great many more or less suggestive town names in Pennsylvania, including the famous one not mentioned yet. There are so many that you can write a lyric comparable to Dave Van Ronk’s Garden State Stomp with … you know.
(As a former New Jerseyan who grew up in one of the towns mentioned here, I get to mention this song; yes, all the names are real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpbNdTY0ogQ)
One amusing aside: One of my godfathers was the Episcopal bishop of Philadelphia, and he and I were out in the country talking about the funny names. As we passed an intersection I said “stop, I’ll bet there’s something licentious about the street names” – and I walked back to find we were at the intersection of Peters and Leacock Roads…
Best straight place name you can’t say without laughing: Nether Providence.
The most accepted pronunciation of Chicago is SHA-CAW-GO. But some diehard south side Chicagoans still pronounce it as CHI-CAH-GO. We elitists scoff at that pronunciation, made with a short I on that first syllable.
Rich
Nice to know I have been saying it correctly, at least within the scope of my Mid Atlantic dialect.
Sheldon
Those are the two pronunciations my wife’s family argues about.
-Kevin
Chicagoans are also split in the way that they pronounce sausage.
It is SAW-SUDGE, not SAH-SIDGE.
Rich