more regional dialect discussion

There are a lot of strangely pronounced names of towns here in MA. We can tell the locals from the non-locals just by the way they pronounce the town name. Oh yeah and by their accents or lack thereof.

I heard a new one this morning, though not necessarily regional "we can order it offline" meaning we can get it from an online retailer. Its some sort 9f bastardization of "we can order it from online"...

In reply to Mazdax605:

Worcester = Woostah

That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent.

Around here, there seems to be much debate about the proper pronunciation of Lancaster. Lan-CAS-ter vs LANG-kiss-ter

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Mazdax605: Worcester = Woostah That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent.

For once that's the correct English pronunciation. I laugh when people over here cal Worcester Sauce Wor-Chest-eR Sauce

Also Notre Dame drives me crazy, it's pronounced Not-Re-Daam.

There's a place in Michigan called Milan, and for some incomprehensible reason people here call it My-lan, not Mi-Laan

Nothing to do with dialect or pronunciation, but I still get a chuckle that I live next door to Birmingham here in Michigan and it's one of the wealthiest communities with a really nice high end down town overflowing with Ferrari's, Lambo's and common E36 M3 like new Porsches, Range Rovers etc. Back in England Birmingham is a E36 M3 hole industrial city that makes Detroit look like Manhattan

I live in Billerica. It's already a weird town name, but to the locals, it's Bill'ricka (said quickly with no emphasis).

I had a really hard time with town names when I first moved here, and I came from Western New York, land of confusing Iroquois names for things.

My father in law is a retired Boston ironworker, so he has the stereotypical accent. We were talking about moving a piano and I honestly thought he kept saying panel.

I enjoy asking people if they pronounce the capital of Kentucky "Louie-ville" or "Louis-ville".

Both wrong, it's "Frankfort"

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Mazdax605: Worcester = Woostah That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent.

For once that's the correct English pronunciation. I laugh when people over here cal Worcester Sauce Wor-Chest-eR Sauce

Please come visit and tell my in-laws that. They think I'm crazy.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Mazdax605: Worcester = Woostah That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent.

For once that's the correct English pronunciation. I laugh when people over here cal Worcester Sauce Wor-Chest-eR Sauce

Please come visit and tell my in-laws that. They think I'm crazy.

Just tell them you have it on good authority from a genuine Englishman. I'm not necessarily arguing with the crazy assessment though, not that that's a bad thing

Mazdax605 wrote: There are a lot of strangely pronounced names of towns here in MA. We can tell the locals from the non-locals just by the way they pronounce the town name. Oh yeah and by their accents or lack thereof.

A lot of towns and lakes in Minnesota have native American derived names. Whenever there's a new reporter on one of the local television stations they always butcher the pronounciations.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4HLYe31MBrg

Here you go.

"Devil is beating his wife" here.

Some local names from where I grew up.
Slaithwaite - Slou-It
Linthwait -Lin-fit
Golcar - Go-Ka

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Mazdax605: Worcester = Woostah That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent. Around here, there seems to be much debate about the proper pronunciation of Lancaster. Lan-CAS-ter vs LANG-kiss-ter

I go with AVRO. It's Lan-cas-ter

It's fun to hear non-natives make Illinois plural. Ill-in-noy, not Ill-in-noise.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

JamesMcD wrote: Aren't there funny differences in how numbers are spoken as well? For instance, if a house number is 1557, don't you guys say One-Double-Five-Seven, while we might say "Fifteen-Fifty-Seven"?

We say'Fifteen-Fifty-Seven'. But house numbers bring up something else interesting. In the UK street numbers go 1,2,3,4,5,6..... with odd and even on opposite sides of the road. When still in the UL and I saw an American address I honestly wondered how long the berkeleying streets were!

Same way here except 100/101 is the next block etc. East/west, north south by a dividing street System devised by an Irishman in 1700s.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Mazdax605: Worcester = Woostah That's one of my favorites to hear in a Boston accent.

For once that's the correct English pronunciation. I laugh when people over here cal Worcester Sauce Wor-Chest-eR Sauce Also Notre Dame drives me crazy, it's pronounced Not-Re-Daam. There's a place in Michigan called Milan, and for some incomprehensible reason people here call it My-lan, not Mi-Laan Nothing to do with dialect or pronunciation, but I still get a chuckle that I live next door to Birmingham here in Michigan and it's one of the wealthiest communities with a really nice high end down town overflowing with Ferrari's, Lambo's and common E36 M3 like new Porsches, Range Rovers etc. Back in England Birmingham is a E36 M3 hole industrial city that makes Detroit look like Manhattan

Does anyone that lives in Birmingham (MI) pronounce it correctly? My Michigan-ese forces me to pronounce it Birming-ham. I think I've heard others call it that too.

I used to live in Milan- that one is beyond me!

Appleseed wrote: It's fun to hear non-natives make Illinois plural. Ill-in-noy, not Ill-in-noise.

Also fun with how we pronounce Des Plaines. You'd assume that since we get our state name correct that we'd get the town/river correct, but nope. Leave the esses in there.

petegossett wrote:

Appleseed wrote: Northern Illinois , and we use drug out.

Yeah, I grew up in IL knowing "drug" as a verb long before ever hearing it as a noun. These town names down here in MS will drive you crazy: Saucier is pronounced "So-sure", but Gautier is "Go-shay". D'Iberville is 2-distinct words "Dee Iberville", and Biloxi is "Bill-uxy". Although we had Hoopeston just up the road from us in IL...it's pronounced like "hook" not "hoop". It's a good way to distinguish the non-locals though.

When I was in Biloxi many years ago, it was Diberville. Must be all those Yankees didn't know how to pronounce it properly.

Here's another IL one - some 20-years ago when I was hanging around the Kankakee area quite a bit, there's a burb there named Burbonais that all the locals pronounced "Bur-bone-nis".

Two that irritate me here are Greenwich Village (pronounced) Grenich and Houston St pronounced Howston. I understand tourists and foreigners pronouncing it wrong but I have coworkers that grew up here constantly saying Green Which and Hewstin. How can you live here damn near 50 years and continue to screw that up.

mtn wrote:

Appleseed wrote: It's fun to hear non-natives make Illinois plural. Ill-in-noy, not Ill-in-noise.

Also fun with how we pronounce Des Plaines. You'd assume that since we get our state name correct that we'd get the town/river correct, but nope. Leave the esses in there.

Or Joliet. Nothing French in our pronunciation. Joe-Lee-Et.

There is a small town in western MI called Watervliet, pronounced Water-vuh-leet.

PA has Dubois, pronounced Dew-boys.

Oh yeah, and while the Borough of "Throop" = "Troop", "three" is "tree".

For me it's the names of Iraq and Iran, those should be short I sounds and not long I sounds. I never did understand why Lieutenant was Left-tenant either, it's a French word so the American pronunciation is at least closer.

Even the natives of Wilkes-Barre cant agree on how to pronounce it. Ive asked many people if its Wilkes-"Bar", Wilkes-"Bear", or Wilkes-"Berry" and never get a clear answer. All 3 seem to be accepted equally. Ive been using "Berry".

Michigan also gives us Lake Orion. Everybody in the world says "Or-i-on", like the stars but Michigan insists it "Or-eee-un".