In grade school I was taught to include the first "s" in the first syllable: wis-CON-sin. However I believe in the native pronunciation it's correctly attached to the second syllable" wi-SKON-cin.
I'm trying to figure out what the difference is, and I just can't.
If you put the "s" in the first syllable rather than the second, the "c" comes out a lot harder.
Putting the "s" and "c" in the same syllable produces a very noticeable "SKUH" sound to my ear, whereas separating them is more of a "HISS-KUH". One of those where I know it when I hear it, I guess.
I can't tell one bit of difference. In fact, it doesn't matter which syllable I 'decide' to put the letter 's' in: I still end up pronouncing it exactly the same either way. What are you guys doing? Pausing between syllables or something? All the letters just flow together when I say the word, no matter how I conceptualize the syllabic structure. I'm honestly in the dark here. And keep in mind that I'm a bit of a language nerd, so this is really baffling me.
And in fact, we've done this with words before. Spanish cañon became English canyon. That's good! It's the same word, just changed to follow our rules! And nobody has any problem knowing how canyon is pronounced.
Is this a good time for me to point out that the English word canyon is
not pronounced the same as the Spanish word cañón? Both vowels are pronounced differently, and the stress is on the wrong syllable.
Another classic state capital mispronunciation is "dez moynz."
And yet ... Des Plaines, IL ...
This thread is meaningless for me, since Spanish pronounciations are pretty much straightforward 
(The opposite, however, isn't true).
So it doesn't bother you when people pronounce
cabeza to rhyme with
fresa?
It always strikes me as extremely pretentious when East Coasters in particular use the argument “that’s how it’s pronounced in Spanish, so why should it be anything else?” when justifying pronouncing Nevada or Colorado differently from the local consensus. Do they also pronounce Texas, New Mexico, or Montana like the Spanish words? How about pronouncing Detroit “Deh-twah?”
I agree with this 1000%. If I go to the northeast and mispronounce a place like Worcester, MA incorrectly, I'm going to be corrected very quickly - and rightly so. But apparently it's offensive for places off the coasts to defend their own pronunciations. As someone from Utah, I will defend the proper pronunciation of neighboring Nevada (while obviously trying not to be annoying about it). But the reaction from eastern people is almost always something along the lines of "oh you're so silly" with zero effort to fix it. I'm willing to be patient with people, but that sort of reaction is simply rude IMO.
How do these people pronounce Cape Canaveral?
Actually, what I'm interested in is how Mexican-Americans pronounce the Spanish-origin names of certain Texas towns, as compared to how white Texans pronounce them.
Now let's talk about the word
Parmesan. I'll continue pronouncing it 'wrong' till the day I die.
