This is true? - Geographic oddities that defy conventional wisdom

Started by The Nature Boy, November 28, 2015, 10:07:02 AM

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ipeters61

Quote from: kalvado on May 12, 2019, 05:42:06 PM
There is also some room for playing with toponyms.
For example, do you know that Amsterdam* is closer to NYC than London**?

*Amsterdam NY
** London ON
I love these sorts of things.  When I was in college, I interviewed for a job in Berlin CT and would just tell people from southern CT (who, ostensibly, didn't really know that Berlin CT existed) that I was interviewing for a job in Berlin.
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vdeane

What makes the two Vancouvers interesting is that they are both on the I-5/BC 99 corridor.  If Washington wanted to be mean to people from out of the area, they could sign all interchanges with I-5 as "I-5 North/Vancouver" and "I-5 South/Vancouver".
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

KEVIN_224

Quote from: ipeters61 on May 12, 2019, 07:05:23 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 12, 2019, 05:42:06 PM
There is also some room for playing with toponyms.
For example, do you know that Amsterdam* is closer to NYC than London**?

*Amsterdam NY
** London ON
I love these sorts of things.  When I was in college, I interviewed for a job in Berlin CT and would just tell people from southern CT (who, ostensibly, didn't really know that Berlin CT existed) that I was interviewing for a job in Berlin.

And they pronounce it like the Prussian capitol: ber-LINN instead of how it's said here...BER-linn.

One of my brothers lives in Middletown, CT. Cross the Connecticut River and chances are you'd be in Portland, CT. However, whenever my mother or twin brother refer to Portland, we're nearly always referring to Maine. :)

ipeters61

Quote from: KEVIN_224 on May 12, 2019, 08:40:05 PM
Quote from: ipeters61 on May 12, 2019, 07:05:23 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 12, 2019, 05:42:06 PM
There is also some room for playing with toponyms.
For example, do you know that Amsterdam* is closer to NYC than London**?

*Amsterdam NY
** London ON
I love these sorts of things.  When I was in college, I interviewed for a job in Berlin CT and would just tell people from southern CT (who, ostensibly, didn't really know that Berlin CT existed) that I was interviewing for a job in Berlin.

And they pronounce it like the Prussian capitol: ber-LINN instead of how it's said here...BER-linn.

One of my brothers lives in Middletown, CT. Cross the Connecticut River and chances are you'd be in Portland, CT. However, whenever my mother or twin brother refer to Portland, we're nearly always referring to Maine. :)
Yeah my father (who grew up in Europe) always got annoyed that I'd say BERlin instead of BerLIN when referring to the one in CT.  Then again, my CT friends always hated when I said NorITCH (British way) instead of NorWICH.

Actually, sometimes I have to emphasize when I'm talking about Middletown DE or Middletown CT when talking to family or friends, since they're both fairly important towns in both states (at least from my perspective).
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed on my posts on the AARoads Forum are my own and do not represent official positions of my employer.
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MantyMadTown

Quote from: KEVIN_224 on May 12, 2019, 08:40:05 PM
Quote from: ipeters61 on May 12, 2019, 07:05:23 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 12, 2019, 05:42:06 PM
There is also some room for playing with toponyms.
For example, do you know that Amsterdam* is closer to NYC than London**?

*Amsterdam NY
** London ON
I love these sorts of things.  When I was in college, I interviewed for a job in Berlin CT and would just tell people from southern CT (who, ostensibly, didn't really know that Berlin CT existed) that I was interviewing for a job in Berlin.

And they pronounce it like the Prussian capitol: ber-LINN instead of how it's said here...BER-linn.

One of my brothers lives in Middletown, CT. Cross the Connecticut River and chances are you'd be in Portland, CT. However, whenever my mother or twin brother refer to Portland, we're nearly always referring to Maine. :)

We also have a New Berlin in Wisconsin that's pronounced the same way–new BER-linn instead of new ber-LINN.
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TheHighwayMan3561

Can't speak for the CT one, but my understanding was the WI one was changed before the US entered WWI in a wave of anti-Germán sentiment.
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jon daly

Not sure why, but the Thames in Connecticut is pronounced differently from the one in England.

Thaymes vs Tems.

CNGL-Leudimin

Quote from: kalvado on May 12, 2019, 05:42:06 PMThere is also some room for playing with toponyms.
For example, do you know that Amsterdam* is closer to NYC than London**?

*Amsterdam NY
** London ON

I like to take this to the extreme. For example, once on a Guess the Road thread elsewhere I came up with a very rural road and claimed it was just one mile away from Madrid (the thread is restricted to roads in Spain only BTW). And indeed, it was one mile away from Madrid... de las Caderechas, a little village in Burgos province. Another example is this:
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 06, 2019, 10:37:01 AM
Boston to Worcester: I-90, MA 9, US 20, I-95, MA 2, and US 1 are banned.

Quote from: CNGL-Leudimin on January 06, 2019, 12:16:25 PM
A52-A453-M1-A42-M42-M5-A4440-A44 :bigass:.

roadgeekteen didn't specify which Boston and Worcester, so I used the ones in (good old) England, UK.
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english si

Quote from: jon daly on May 13, 2019, 06:17:40 AM
Not sure why, but the Thames in Connecticut is pronounced differently from the one in England.

Thaymes vs Tems.
Because the English pronunciation has undergone the transmogrification to something shorter like Totnum, Wusster, Grenitch, Suvvuk*, etc while the spelling has stayed the same? Certainly it's something that American tourists sometimes get wrong as it is rather warped.

Sure, it's no Lie-cest-er Squay-yer ('Lester Square', with square being mono-syllabic), that's very common, but you do get some 'Fames', or (the better) 'Taymes', rather than Tems.

Oh, and if you are in Oxford, it's pronounced 'eye-sis' ;)

*Tottenham, Worcester, Greenwich, Southwark.

empirestate

Quote from: english si on May 13, 2019, 12:20:33 PM
Quote from: jon daly on May 13, 2019, 06:17:40 AM
Not sure why, but the Thames in Connecticut is pronounced differently from the one in England.

Thaymes vs Tems.
Because the English pronunciation has undergone the transmogrification to something shorter like Totnum, Wusster, Grenitch, Suvvuk*, etc while the spelling has stayed the same?

That's my guess: that the passage of time, rather than the physical distance, has resulted in two separate evolutions of pronunciation. When the two place names were contemporaneous; i.e., when the American Thames was named after the English Thames, I am certain they were pronounced the same by the same speakers.

jon daly

The only Greenwich that I am aware of that has a long E is upstate in NY.

hotdogPi

New England usually gets things correct. The two I know of that don't are Warwick, RI (phonetic, and probably the case for the other Warwicks) and Leominster, MA (three syllables, but people not from the area often use four; the one in the UK has two).

Side note: if this thread gets split, it should get merged into the "unique local pronunciations" thread.
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jon daly

Yeah, the ones that I think are really mangled are elsewhere and of non-English origin. Ver-sall-iss, Ohio, Kay-ro Illinois, and New May-drid, Missourri come to mind.

How would they split a thread? Does someone move the pronunciation  posts that are already here to another thread?

TheHighwayMan3561

In Minnesota, Monticello is "Monti-sell-o" , not "cello"  the instrument as Jefferson's home is pronounced.
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thspfc

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on May 13, 2019, 04:24:00 PM
In Minnesota, Monticello is "Monti-sell-o" , not "cello"  the instrument as Jefferson's home is pronounced.
Monticello, WI is pronounced "Monny-sello". We don't pronounce t's.

Bruce

Quote from: vdeane on May 12, 2019, 08:23:21 PM
What makes the two Vancouvers interesting is that they are both on the I-5/BC 99 corridor.  If Washington wanted to be mean to people from out of the area, they could sign all interchanges with I-5 as "I-5 North/Vancouver" and "I-5 South/Vancouver".

Luckily, WSDOT is smart and signs I-5 as Vancouver BC / Seattle / Portland.

But both Vancouvers do have stops on the Cascades, which has a daily round-trip that runs all the way between them. And there were a few news articles from the 2010 Olympics that described international tourists showing up to bookings in Vancouver, WA and wondering where the venues were.

hbelkins

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on May 13, 2019, 04:24:00 PM
In Minnesota, Monticello is "Monti-sell-o" , not "cello"  the instrument as Jefferson's home is pronounced.

Same in Kentucky.

We also have Ver-sales, Yo-suh-mite and Oh-knee-da, among other places.


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webny99

Quote from: thspfc on May 13, 2019, 05:01:48 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on May 13, 2019, 04:24:00 PM
In Minnesota, Monticello is "Monti-sell-o" , not "cello"  the instrument as Jefferson's home is pronounced.
Monticello, WI is pronounced "Monny-sello". We don't pronounce t's.

Around here it's more like Monneh-sello. Having the "y" in there sounds really weird, at least to me.

CtrlAltDel

I don't know if this counts as geographical, but there are only five bridges across the Mississippi River in* the state of Mississippi, and one of them only serves railroad traffic.

(* You know what I mean.)
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TheHighwayMan3561

Iowa has Ne-vay-da.

One thing I still am not 100% sure about after all this time, how in the hell is the state of Nevada pronounced? I say the second syllable similarly to the word "apple" , but the "open up and say ahh"  is common enough that I'm not sure.
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kphoger

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on May 14, 2019, 02:50:22 PM
Iowa has Ne-vay-da.

One thing I still am not 100% sure about after all this time, how in the hell is the state of Nevada pronounced? I say the second syllable similarly to the word "apple" , but the "open up and say ahh"  is common enough that I'm not sure.

Isn't the one in Missouri also pronounced Nuh-Vay-Duh?

I grew up pronouncing the state name Nuh-Vah-Duh, but nowadays I say Nuh-Væ-Duh.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
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Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Scott5114

I believe the state is supposed to be pronounced Ne-vad-uh, with a as in apple.
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kphoger

Well, I guess that depends on how you define "supposed to".  The name is the Spanish word for snowy, and the Spanish pronunciation would be  Neh-ßah-ðah . . .
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

US 89

As pronounced by locals, it is indeed the "æpple" sound. The Spanish is wrong.  :sombrero:

michravera

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 15, 2019, 03:56:01 PM
I believe the state is supposed to be pronounced Ne-vad-uh, with a as in apple.

The state even puts the breve the a on some of its signs in an effort to get people to pronounce it that way.

This is the same sort of situations where places in Texas and California that were named after the same thing and are spelled the same often aren't pronounced the same. It should be noted with interest that Amarillo, TX and Camarillo, CA don't rhyme and aren't even very close to rhyming despite sharing the last 8 letters. My understanding is that the Texas pronunciations of many of these words more closely approximates the modern Portuguese than any modern Spanish. Brazil has a patriotic song entitled "verde e amarelo" pronounced something very close to "verge ya Mahry Lou". It's only a short putt from "am a Rilla?".



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