Speaking 'properly'

[elady25]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Sue Wartell <swartell at y...> 
wrote:
> I'm not entirely convinced that the place name
> pronounciations in the British Isles in general are
> not an elaborate joke on the entire rest of the world.
>  As in, "Let's just see how silly we can make these
> people look" - a mild enough form of entertainment, to
> be sure.
> 
> As for the "correct" pronounciation, I think it's
> whatever the folks who live there say it is.  And if
> they can't agree, I think I'll just give it up as a
> bad job and spell it out.

We have them in America, too.  For example, I used to reside in 
Utah.  Would you believe Tooele is pronounce Teh-wil-ah?  and 
Hurricane has a short a vowel sound at the end instead of a long a.  
Also, the local dialect requires that the towns of Spanish Fork and 
American Fork use the sound "fark."   Orignally I'm from Michigan.  
We have two spellings of the place name Mackinaw; one way spells it 
that way, and another spells it Mackinac.  And if you go to the Upper 
Peninsula (that's that chunk of Michigan that looks like it should 
belong to Minnesota) they about speak another language.  I've also 
lived in Missouri; but it's Missourah the closer you get to 
Arkansas.  This brings up the challenge between saying Arkansas (Ar-
can-saw) and Kansas (Cans-ass).  I live on Nowlin street; I pronounce 
it Now-lin, but some prefer No-lin.  I also live in the town of 
Dearborn, but old-timers like my dad call it Deer-bern.  When 
travelling in California, I made the mistake of pronouncing La Jolla 
the way it looks in English; because it's a Spanish name, it's La 
Hoya. 

America has an amazing number of different dialects, far more than 
simply southern and northern, as well as differentiating speeds.  
Even vocabulary changes from region to region:  what's pop in one 
place is soda in another and coke in a third, grocery stores in Utah 
put purchases in a sack rather than a bag, and in Michigan a sliding 
glass door is known as a doorwall.  And don't even get me started on 
the idiomatic expressions!  

imamommy
who took way too long to learn how to pronounce "worchestershire" (as 
in the sauce used on meat) correctly, and definitely thinks the 
English made that one up just to torment people.