xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech
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Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you’re okay.
I can only think if Toron(t)o. Never really thought about other towns doing the same thing.
When I hear someone from that city say their city’s name, it sounds like it should be spelled “Trono.”
Shibboleths are amazing! Calgary is almost universally pronounced “Cal-Gary” by non-locals, locals say “Calgree”
I’m gonna have to disagree with you. Have you ever seen a Shoggoth? They’re horrific and just because they’re protoplasmic beings doesn’t mean their mispronunciation of English should be celebrated.
Vangcouver. =] Also every city in Australia.
Melb’n
Like the other reply said, it’s all over the place in Australia. You can easily tell a tourist—especially an American tourist—because they’ll say “can-bair-a” instead of “can-bruh”.
It’s not unusual in the UK, too. Worcester is Wost-er, Magdalen(e) is mawd-lin, and Leicester is lester.
OMG, that makes it so much worse. If someone tells you about a specific place, and you want to look it up later, you have absolutely zero chance of ever spelling it correctly. Good luck typing lester or woster in Wikipedia or Maps.
As it happens, that worked just fine:
Worcester is famous even outside the UK because of Worcestershire sauce (pronounced “woster-shuh” sauce), the condiment named after the region. And because the name is on the bottle, it’s easy for people to remember.
We have a Bradenton nearby which gets shortened to branton (pronounced like brain-nton). Gotta have the long A or else you’ll accidently send someone half an hour away to Brandon.
Surely you mean “Trahnah”?