Map of New England Places Everybody Pronounces Wrong
As part of the 30 Day Map Challenge, Maxwell Howe created a map of New England places that many out-of-towners mispronounce (Instagram). As you would expect when you start talking about local pronunciations and accents, he’s getting some blowback:
You’re mixing accent with correct pronunciation. It’s only WUH-stah if you have a non-rhotic accent. If a non-native dropped that instead of “WUH-ster” in conversation they’d sound like an asshat. Same with Lem-in-ster et al. You do this correctly when you write Concord as CON-kerd, where the local accent would have it sound like “CON-kid”…. We expect the accent on the first syllable, but not for the R to drop. Source: native new englander with a rhotic accent.
Growing up in the Midwest, we had plenty of our own place names like this: Madrid (MAD-rid) and What Cheer (WATCH-ear) in Iowa were two of my favorites.
As a baseball card collector in my teens, I was familiar with the Rhode Island city of Pawtucket from the minor league stats listings on the backs of the cards of Red Sox players (Pawtucket is the Sox’s AAA team). My friends and I pronounced it like it looked. It was only when I went to a Red Sox game like 15 years ago that I overheard a guy talking about some prospect coming up from Puh-TUCK-it (he made it sound like a single syllable somehow) that my eyes went wide and my brain exploded. That’s how you pronounce it?
Socials & More