TIL there's an Arkansas City in Kansas, and Arkansas is pronounced with the 's' so it rhymes with "Kansas"
Arkansas City, Kansas - Wikipedia
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!
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.
The Mackinac Bridge connects the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan. It is in Mackinaw City. There is a nearby island, Mackinac.
The bridge is mackin-awwh.
The city is mackin-awwh.
The island is mackin-awwh.
Michigan has a Maine accent...
Y'all come to New Orleans and try to pronounce a single street name "right."
Bourbon Street
It's pronounced "urinal."
Are you saying "boo" or "boo-urbon"?
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)
That's some certifiable insane shit.
Arab, Alabama. (Ay-rab)
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.
Company I work for is based in Buda but everyone pronounces it "byooduh".
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).
Arkansas is pronounced Arr-Kansas already though. ;)
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?)
There's a Miami, Oklahoma. Pronounced, "My-am-uh"
My extended family is from a tiny Ohio hill town named Antioch, pronounced "annie-OCK".
I've been there a couple of times. I say the 't' in anti, but I guess the locals don't
I learned that from the Big Bang Theory!
That's some high tier psychological damage right there.
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.
French language be like:
Why not just ask the fucking Quapaw tribe they stole the name from?