xerxes (11/30/82)
The U. S. is full of mispronounced foreign words becoming the names for towns and geographic features. Des Plaines (day plawn with a soft 'n' to le Francais) is Dez Plainz to midwesterners. Other well known examples just in the area are: Vienna Small town in S. Ill ,long i. Beaucoup Would you believe boocup New Madrid,MO Madrid with a short a and an accent on Mad Cairo like the syrup I'm sure there are many others-pass yours along to this newsgroup. ihldt!xerxes
jcw (12/01/82)
We even pronounce the same town name differently for two different towns: Beaufort, NC has first syllable rhyming with 'tow', and Beaufort, SC has first syllable rhyming with 'few'.
reed (12/01/82)
Re: Mispronounced Foreign Words... The Upstate New York department store "Benoits", pronounced: "Ben-oytz" The window/household cleaner "Bon Ami", pronounced: "Bonn Ammee" Dave Reed, UTCS utcsstat!reed
mcewan (12/01/82)
#R:ihldt:-115600:uiucdcs:19000004:000:204 uiucdcs!mcewan Dec 1 13:34:00 1982 Just curious, but how does everyone else spell Champaign? This is a strange question. They either spell it "Champaign" or they spell it wrong. How did this get into a discussion about pronunciation?
laurir (12/02/82)
Another "mispronounced" city name is Los Angeles, originally LOAS AWNHEHLEHS, now sometimes "LAWS ANJELEEZ" or even "LAWS ANGLELEEZ" even by residents.
CSvax:Pucc-H:Physics:hal (12/02/82)
#R:ihldt:-115600:pur-phy:9300001:000:140
pur-phy!hal Dec 1 16:34:00 1982
Indiana has the following towns (with appropriate Hoosier pronounciation).
Monticello pr. Montasello
Versailles pr. VersailsObenson (12/02/82)
How about: Pierre S.D. pronounced ''pier'' utah-cs!Obenson
olmstead (12/03/82)
How about Goethe (GO-thee) street in Chicago, and Marseilles (Mar-SAILS) in Illinois, I think?
prg (12/03/82)
Des Plaines is bad, but those that still insist on "Illinoise" drive me CRAZY!!!! Phil Gunsul (fill gun-soul) ...lime!we13!prg
franka (12/04/82)
#R:ihldt:-115600:tekcad:11000001:000:537
tekcad!franka Dec 4 15:35:00 1982
There is also a town in Illinois pronounced "Versails" (spelled
as in the French). But being a native of Illinois, I have always found
that the word for natives of this state, i.e., Illinoians, was a bit
kludgy. One of my friends has coined an alternative, which I find vastly
more modern and easy on the toungue, i.e. Illinoids!
Well, I think its catchy, and I'm
proud to me an Illinoid,
Frank Adrian
uucp: {ucbvax,decvax,chico,pur-ee,cbosg,ihnss}!teklabs!tekcad!franka
CSnet: franka@tek
ARPAnet: franka.tek@rand-relayfaunt (12/08/82)
That's because one is an English name, and the other is French.
gsp (12/09/82)
I am amused by this discussion of mispronouncing names. Many of the sounds in one language do not appear in another. Coming from Montreal (pronounced mun/tree/yall by English Montrealers and mon/reh/alle (soft n) by Montrealais Francais) this is obvious. I don't even have a way of writing the nasals of French in English because they are not used in English. You can imagine that makes it hard to pronounce for people not raised hearing these sounds. Also, why is is not okay to anglicize names in the U.S. while people regularly do that with foreign names like Paris, Moskva (MosCOW), and others? Here's a different class of similar nature. I went to Westminster school. Most people at the school pronounced it West-minister perhaps because of the religeous association of Westminster Abbey. Gary Perlman Bell Labs MH 5D-105 mhb5b!gsp x3624
death (12/10/82)
Actually, where I come from (LA/Los Angeles), it is quite often pronounced 'loss anjeless', or more frequently, 'ell ay'; that is, L A. californian val-speak NOT spoken here -=- dd