Speaking 'properly'

[MsTattersall]

Nobody's brought up the uniquely Texan way of mangling the language 
(of which our President is the poster boy), as well as its place 
names. 

We have Palestine (Pal-es-TEEN) and Colorado City (colo-RAY-do). I 
once lived on a street named Huisache, which was always fun to hear 
telemarketers from "up north" try to pronounce. In south Texas, there 
is a town of the same name that is spelled the way it sounds: 
Weesatch.

Many years ago, I worked for a company that ordered items from 
Minneapolis for drop-shipping to other places. I placed one order 
over the phone to be shipped to Sanger, Texas, which is about 40 
miles north of Dallas. Time passed and the folks in Sanger never got 
their order, so I called Mpls to see what was the holdup. The person 
in Mpls said, "We shipped that, but it came back. There's no such 
place as Singer, Texas."

"But I very plainly said Sanger. SANGer!"

"Oh. I thought you were saying 'Singer' in your Texas accent."

Then there is the old joke about two out-of-town guys sitting in a 
fast-food restaurant in the city of Mexia, Texas, arguing about how 
the name is pronounced. One insists it's MEX-e-ah, like it's spelled. 
The other insists it's me-HAY-ah, like it would be in Spanish. To 
resolve the controversy, they call over the hometown waitress and 
ask, "Can you please tell us how you pronounce the name of this 
place?" The waitress points to the sign on the wall and says very 
slowly and precisely, "DAI-RY QUEEN."

Ms. Tattersall
(It's me-HAY-ah, by the way.)

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "elady25" <imamommy at s...> > 
> 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.