TIL there's an Arkansas City in Kansas, and Arkansas is pronounced with the 's' so it rhymes with "Kansas"
Arkansas City, Kansas - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_City,_Kansas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_City,_Kansas
There was a disagreement on how to pronounce Arkansas; the first two US senators from Arkansas disagreed on how to say it.
Congress ended up having to request the Arkansas legislature in defining how to pronounce the state name.
If you want people to call you Arkansaw, don't spell it Arkansas. Thankyou for coming to my TED Talk.
I, an east coaster, once bought a car from Texarkana. When I learned it was literally on the border of Texas and Arkansas, I think my brain broke. Great share, thanks!
Arkansas side. Drunken ebay purchase out in the sticks that amazingly worked out. '72 olds 98 that sounded like a c47 on approach. Thanks for listening to my lame nonsense.
Here's the really crazy thing.
Ark City, KS is located on the Ar-KAN-sas River. But this is the same river that flows through Little Rock under the name AR-kan-saw.
We come through and destroy an entire native civilization, and as a final "fuck you" we butcher their dead languages and name military equipment after them.
Oh, don’t forget putting towns named after some of the military officials that subjugated them on their reservation land.
There’s a Newark NJ and a Newark DE.
The Jersey one is pronounced Newurk and the Delaware one is pronounced New Ark. It’s mildly inconvenient.
The little town in Texas is also "New Ark".
Some of my other favorites:
Texas
Georgia
Canada (less experience here, tbf)
Texas has so many. Bogota pronounced buh-GO-duh
Arkansas has a Lafayette county pronounced luh-FAY-it even though that county literally borders Louisiana.
Don't even get me started on Bowie, DeKalb, or Houston.
I'm gonna add one I love trotting out from Oklahoma.
There's a Miami, Oklahoma. It's pronounced My-am-uh.
I've got about a billion from Oklahoma specifically.
Ah yes. "Hoo-ston" and "How-ston" are definitely both things.
"De-kab" and "De-kalb"
Haven't run into the Bowie one.
In Texas it's Boo-wee. That was the man's name as is the knife that bears it. Outside of Texas people mispronounce it as Bow-ee like Ziggy Stardust.
If you're talking about David (rest in power) Bowie, then it's Bow-ee. But the knife is Boo-wee.
I defer to you then. I just know it's not Booduh like it god damned well should be. Was reminded elsewhere in this thread that we also have a Ne-VAY-duh in Texas, to say nothing of the Native American placenames that almost every state has specifically to fuck with newcomers, even though they undoubtedly moved from a state that has its own examples.
Lol, that's what I thought it was until they corrected me on the phone. I don't live anywhere near there but that's how they say it to me.
There's also a Newark Ohio which is pronounced something like 'nu-urk' or even 'nurk' by some (the latter I always took as people being silly, but I don't even know anymore).
Ohio is great for shit pronunciations of town names.
Bellfountaine - bell FOUN'n (the t drops there in most dialects, some would say 'fountain' with the the first syllable stressed).
Versailles - verSAILS
Medina - muhDYEnuh
We have "verSAILS" in Indiana too. Also:
Peru - Pee-roo
Russiaville - Roosha-vil
Lebanon - Leb'nun
My favorite though is that there are two spellings for the Wabash river: Wabash and Ouabache. And despite being in a town that is on the Wabash River, the local Oabache Elementary School is pronounced: Wah-bat-shee.
The pronunciation of Lebanon you called out may sound like it came from a hayseed, but it’s closer to the way people in the country of Lebanon pronounce it than the mainstream American pronunciation.
Right down the road from Versailles is the town I grew up in and the movie Hoosiers is based off of. Milan (pronounced my - lan)
I think y'all also have KAY-row (Cairo) if I remember right. (or maybe that's Illinois?)
I've been there a couple of times. I say the 't' in anti, but I guess the locals don't
or rio grande (rye-oh grand).
I'm not sure how Gallipolis should actually be pronounced. The ~polis suffix seems sensible enough, but not sure on the first part.
I would say the Ohio version gal-uh-puh-LISS and I think that's how people I knew from there said it, but it's been a couple decades, heh.
Natchitoches, Louisiana (/ˈnækətəʃ/ NAK-ə-təsh), or “Nakadish”
Yet Nacogdoches, Texas is more or less how you would think, Nack-uh-doe-chiss.
That's how they pronounce Nevada County in Arkansas. Also, Dierks is Dereks. I'm sure there are more that will come to me