Randy Hemingway's Blog

You know what’s so fun about saying “Freudian?” It’s that it’s pronounced differently than it’s spelled. Instead of “Free-uhd,” it’s pronounced “Froid.” And that is one of the main reasons I despise the English language, even though it’s the only language I know. Hey, this is America! If I don’t like English, I should be able to have the CHOICE of speaking another language, even if everyone around me only speaks English! So, because I’m a follower, I’ll probably just speak English until the day that I die. Such is life, my friend, cold, unforgiving, unfair, such is life. Anyway, my point is that English is chock full of words that are spelled one way and pronounced a completely different way.

For instance, New England is full of towns and geographical features (mountains, lakes, and the like) with crazy cool names borrowed from the Native Americans. These names can be pretty hard to pronounce, but they’re pretty straight-forward, too. For instance, Lake Winnipesaukee is pronounced “Win-ni-pe-sau-kee.” How hard was that?

However, there’s a bunch of towns with totally British names that are wicked hard to pronounce. Usually, the final authority on how a particular town’s name should be pronounced is the local residents in/around the town. One example is the town of Portsmouth, NH. A local news dude, here in St. Louis, was talking about President Obama’s town hall event there in Portsmouth, and he pronounced the name of the town, “Ports-mouth.” Now, if he went to NH and said he was in Ports-mouth, people would look at him like he was crazy. Someone who liked to correct strangers would probably say, “No, no, it’s ‘Port-smith.’” Yeah, that’s how NH natives say it, “Port-smith.” And “Pli-mith” (Plymouth), “Dart-mith” (Dartmouth), etc.

This principle isn’t confined to New England, though. Here in Missouri, there’s several town names with French origins. That gets harder, because the French are into the whole rolling the “r” and all that kind of frill jazz. So, around here, Florissant is pronounced “Flor-i-sint” and Creve Coeur is pronounced “Creev Cor.” Manchester is pronounced how it’s spelled, though.

Oh, a good example of the same town name being pronounced differently, depending on the region you’re in, is Concord. In New Hampshire, Concord is pronounced like the word “conquered.” However, my family lived near Concord, NC, for a while and, down there, it’s pronounced “Con-cord,” like the big, white jet with the pointy nose.

It’s interesting to learn how different regions of the country pronounce words, especially when the “proper” pronunciation isn’t so obvious. What are some words you know of that people “mis-pronounce” all the time?

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