Calif does have a lot of hard to pronounce names because of the Mexican, Indian, Eastern (east coast), and Russian, influence. San Fran was settled by the east coasters and Russia play a big part of No CA. It truly is a blended state.
Try some of the names here in ND--It is a challenge, but I am learning.

The Quachita Mountains are pronounced Wash - uh -taw. I've heard weather and news people call it Quaw Cheetah! LOL

We have a Newark and a Poughkeepsie here in Arkansas. Only they're NEW-ARK and Pough Keep See! LOL Those NJ and NY people just keep getting it wrong! LOL

In Western New York, where I grew up, there's a town. Half the people call it "Swarmsville" and half say "Swarmville." I've never neen sure which is correct.

Illinoi - does not have an s or z sound on the end.

de-troiT - it is not DEEE-troit. It is not spoken with a french pronunciation, either, unless you are from there and are having fun with the name!

That's all from me.

When I first moved to California, one of the nearby towns was Vallejo - Va-Lay-Ho.

Yep, I was calling it "Valley-Joe".

I could drive there, park my car (for free), jump on the ferry, and arrive at Fisherman's Wharf in less than an hour and a half. I could not have driven there and paid parking any quicker or cheaper.

I loved the ValleyJoe ferry!

Street in Johnstown, Menoher Blvd.. Pronounced Men-oker

I used to live in El Cajon, California...pronounced El Ca-hone...some people out of state called it El Cage-on.

Manitou Springs(Man-a-two)

Uintah St(U-in-tah)

Worcester (pronounced correctly as "Wooster", not "Wer ces ter")

Woburn (pronounced correctly as "Wooburn", not "Woe burn")

I grew up in Illinois and worked as an information operator in the early 60s. San Jose is a little town there, and it is pronounced San Joe's. Another little town is Cairo, and it is pronounced like Karo Syrup.

I'll add a couple more in WA - Methow Valley. I continually hear people call it the MEE thow, but it's really met-how or probably more correctly med-how with the t being soft, almost a d.

Also Sumas at the Canadian US border. Sue-mass.

Pend Oreille - pronounced pond er ay.

And Des Moines - we say the last S

And not a place name - but our famous geoduck - pronounced gooey duck. I've never been able to figure that one out!

San Francisco streets: Gough (cough), Noe (NO-eee), Local town San Rafael (ra-Fell),

I live in AL now but when I lived in Georgia we had Houston County pronounced House ton. Then there was Dalonega pronounced Dah lon e ga. When I worked as a directory assistance operator many years ago people would call and pronounce it Dah len egg a. Here in AL there is Cheaha pronounced Chee ha. and Oneonta pronounced On e on ah. Silent letters again.

Small town in Missouri: Wakenda. WAH kin dahhh. (As in stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-ahhhh.)

Oklahoma has a ton crazy names.

Durant: if you're local, it's DO-rant.

Miami: my am UH Not local: My am ee

Talala: tuh-la-la not local : Tall la la

Lookeba : lou key buh not local: Looky buh

The funniest part is listening to the weather forecasters --- if they're not from OK they never get them right.

Hey, pudgeder - I have a cousin who lives in DOO-rant!

There is a town in Texas spelled Refugio. People living there call it something like re - fwer - oh. Mexicans cannot believe that anyone would call it that. Mexicans say re - few - he - o. Most people not familiar with either say re- fuge - e - o. Just read that an old train conductor started calling it Re- fury- oh and it just stuck.

Ouachita Mountains = WASH uh taw (in Arkansas)

Gravois Avenue = GRAV-oy (St. Louis)

Spoede Avenue = SPAY-dee (St. Louis)

Goethe Street = GO-thee (St. Louis)

Gratiot Street = GRATCH-it (St. Louis)

Natchitoches, Louisiana = NACK-uh-dish

Atchafalaya River = Uh CHAFF a lie uh (Louisiana)

Wisconsin has it share.

Ouisconsin - An early name by French explorers, later changed to current spelling.

Oconomowoc - Oh con no mo woc

Waukesha - Wa ke shaw

Nemahbin Lake - ne mah bin

Wauwatosa - Wa wah tosa (local nickname: Tosa)

Nicolet - Nik co lay (The final 't' is silent; In French, its a pronunciation guide.)

Navajo - Nav uh ho (The 'j' gets a Spanish pronunciation.)

Nagawicka - Pronounced as spelled: Nag uh wic ka

Freistadt - Frees staad

Eau Claire - Oh clare

Wausau - Wah saw

Dubuqe - Du buke

Pouch Cove - Pooch, not pouch as in Kangaroo

And of course 99% of the people who are not from Newfoundland never pronounce it correctly. It's not New-Found-Land or New-Finland. It's "Newfin -land" where "newfin" rhymes with "goofin" as in "goofin' around"

I've been to or passed by towns by the name of Pulaski in SIX different states. Yep, all pronounced just a little bit different from each other.

In Charlottesville there is a road named Rio that is often pronounced Ree-o like the Spanish word for river. According to locals the "correct" pronunciation is Rye-o.

When in The Netherlands I visited a sea coast city named "Scheveningen" and read that only native speakers of Dutch can pronounce it correctly, and they used that fact during WWII to detect and capture German spies. Apparently even if the German was perfectly fluent in Dutch, they would still mispronounce the city name.

A friend from there was recently recounting the story to me and said "The correct pronunciation is 'Scheveningen' and the German spies would say 'Scheveningen' can you believe it?" He then said both ways again several times, and I couldn't hear any difference, I must be a German Spy.

I live near Manayunk and Conshohocken, and not too far from Tredyffrin and Uwchlan. The Welsh names are real tongue twisters.

After moving from Ohio to Minnesota several years ago, someone
asked where I was from. I said "Ohio" (Which I pronounced: oh-HI-oh )
and they said "wow that's quite an accent, around here we pronounce it
"Iowa". :-)

bob, Dutch has throaty guttural sounds that don't exist in German. The sch in Scheveningen, as with the name of Amsterdam's airport (Schipol) has one such occurrence. The letter "g" triggers another guttural sound in Dutch words not present in German. Dutch and German have some common linguist roots, share many words in common or nearly in common, but the phonetics are very different which is to say - Dutch words look familiar and comfortable to a German speaker but they often mispronounce them. I heard the Scheveningen-WW2 story when I lived in the area, I doubt it's veracity.

SW, who speaks fair beginner's Dutch and pretty good German. It took a lot of practice on my part to say that consonant sound reasonably well.

Back to the US, on a phone call with a Texas friend some years ago, he told me we would go visit his ranch in Blank-Oh during my upcoming visit. Tried to find it on a map, no luck. It turned out to be Blanco. I'm sure the Hispanics and Gringo Spanish speakers in the area cringe whenever the town name is said aloud.

We have one big mispronunciation here in Kansas. We have a city, a street and a river called Arkansas but they are not pronounced like the state but Are-Kansas

When I lived in Missouri, new newscasters mispronounced "The new Ma-DRID fault." It's New MAD-rid.

Here the name of a village is Ajijic. It's pronounced Ah-hee-HEEK.

Tlaquepaque should be pronounced Tah-LACK-a-packee.

The same here - the Spanish names are easy but the Indian influence complicates things.

When I was in St. Thomas, everyone called the neighboring island "St. John's" which is in Newfoundland. It's St. John with no S.

Olychick - that's interesting that you say the "s" in Des Moines. I live in Des Moines, WA, and the "s" is silent. So it's "Da Moine."

Around here we have a town called Port Hueneme (and an actual port). That's the Spanification of a something derived from Chumash (local people's language). Newcomers don't even try. They start saying Port Huh or Port Hue and then just stop. If they're nice we tell them. It's why-NEE-me.

In Long Beach there's a street called Ximeno. Anyone who speaks Spanish, with some slight variations in the vowels, would think that it's pronounced hee-MAY-no, him-EH-no or chee-MEH-no (with the ch either like in church or like in Bach). It could also be pronounced with an "s" sih-MEH-no or a "z", zee-MEY-no. The people of Long Beach, however, say ex-IM-en-o ("im" as in "him").

We also have a long history of people trying to get people to call places named after Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (first European explorer of the California coast) cah-BRILL-o rather than cah-BREE-o on the basis that he was Portuguese, but historians have found that there's much more evidence that he was actually Spanish. They also say that Cabrillo was a place name and his surname was Rodriguez (which is a normal way of doing things in Spanish). Still, the people have spoken. No matter what his buddies might have called him, it's cah-BREE-o here.

Tons of thos- names in WI, too. "Chequamegon" gets massacred on a regular basis (Sha-WAHM-egun), Mequon, Necedah, etc.

Hmm, Sephia, I grew up in Seattle and we always said Des Moines with the s pronounced. Maybe with all the growth/newcomers in Seattle it's morphed, but I found this showing it's pronounced differently than the Iowa Des Moines:
Des Moines pronunciation

Thanks Olychick, that is interesting. I've always heard it minus the "s."

I lived in Iowa for 6 years as a student. Both 's's are silent in Des Moines. Its a French name. The esses are pronunciation guides.

The esses are in these two French words because they are plural.

The American pronunciation of the vowel sounds in each word is not close to how they are pronounced in French.

The s's used to be pronounced in French but that was centuries ago.

In IOWA they don't pronounce either s.

In WASHINGTON, where there is also a place called Des Moines, the final s of that place's name is pronounced as a z, in the American way.

That's exactly right plllog. In WA it is De Moinz.

Haha, well I learned modern French (not that of past centuries) and did so in the 20th century. Sounds and the pronunciation of words in most languages change over time. No less in English than in other languages and maybe more so.

In Europe, words from other languages are often used with their native pronunciation. Some cities do have foreign language version names. It's mostly just in the US where so many things, pronunciations included, get egocentrically rebranded to an "our way".

I am getting an education here. I defer to SnidelyWhiplash in regard to differences between US and French pronunciation of French names, and French grammar. I was quoting what my wife had told me. Years ago, she had taken some French language courses, but maybe not enough.

In regard to French place names, I am reminded of a place in Iron County, Missouri called "Des Arc", or "the curve". My g-great grandfather lived near that place. It got its name from a rail road that was built south from Ironton, MO. After following a valley for about 20 miles, the track curved toward the southwest and at that bend, a town developed and took the name, Des Arc.

Not wanting to beat you over the head jemdandy, but I think this is another French term that got changed somehow (unless from an older form).

I'm more familiar with "arc' as being arch or bow, I suspect the root is the same as archery. Curve? Maybe so. And if so, THE curve would be le arc, contracted to l'arc. The curveS would be Les Arcs.

Des is plural. It means "from the" or "of the", so "from the curves" would be "des arcs" (s at the end of Arc). From one curve would be "de l'arc".

I took the Des Arc information from Missouri web sites describing place names in Missouri. Possibly, at one time, the rail line may have ended at the end of the bend, and then was extended. Des Arc may have been a railroad construction camp that continued to exist after the rail line was extended and construction crews moved on.

There is another "Des Arc" in Arkansas. Its near a stream called "Bayou Des Arc".

I know of three other rail construction camps in Illinois that became towns. these are Noble, Clay City, and Flora. These towns are about 10 miles apart. Two of these camps were located near pre-existing early settlements.

That's the whole point. Pronunciation changes over time and distance. If the city were in France, there would be a point in talking about how it should be pronounced in French. Hypercorrecting a place name back to what the spelling would have you think (whether modern or historical) is a comment on spelling not on the name. Like when Jim Lefebvre went to play the Expos in Montreal and the announcer called him "LuhFAYV" instead of the way he pronounced his name, which was "LaFEEver". But it's correct, you say? No, it's not! A man knows how to pronounce his own name, and if it doesn't match the spelling or history of it, too bad. It's his name and he's the sole arbiter of how it should be said. And the denizens know how the name of their city is said.

The only European language that I know of that doesn't have a lot of drift is Icelandic, and they work very hard at keeping it that way by educating the populace in the sagas, rather than having a fancified academic board, like L'Académie Française, trying to prevent "Le Parking." (Traditionally, French has always had a huge tolerance for innovation. They changed chaire (chair) to chaise because there was a fad for lisping.)

Huh?

This thread points out that language can 'drift' both in pronunciation and meaning of words. I have been told that was the reason why the Catholic Church, centuries ago, chose to record the Bible in Latin. Latin was a 'dead' language, and was not changing. A dead language may be consistent, but has a deficiency in that it may not contain sufficient adjectives and nouns to accurately convey an idea or thought conceived at a later time.

jem, that's why the scientific method of binomial nomenclature....the naming of every living thing.....is primarily in Latin. Every biologist, botanist, entomologist, physician, and others who took Latin in high school is grateful that they did so.

Fascinating, plllog.

Church Latin is a hugely different language than Classical Latin, down to its very structure. :) The church first was associated with Rome and Classical Latin in the 300's under Constantine. Latin isn't dead. The common name for Modern Latin is "Italian". Latin was the international language in the middle ages. Most schools in Europe which taught reading and writing, taught it in Latin. Universities were first established to teach religion and were conducted in Latin--at least partially so still through the 19th century. It was the language used by traders, scribes and emissaries because anyone educated could speak it. I've heard that Classical Arabic is used in a similar way currently in the Middle East. The dialects of Arabic in different regions aren't always mutually intelligible, but they know the classical from religious study and can use it as a lingua franca. But then, sometimes you can also hear people from different countries, communicating in a common "language" of Klingon. :)

"The common name for Modern Latin is "Italian""

Source?

Too many other things to question in the preceding post, but here are a few:

-Being the linguistic expert you seem to suggest you are, you probably know that 100 years ago, a large number and perhaps a majority of Italians didn't speak "Italian" as their mother tongue. That number remains significant today.

-There are many, many Arabs who do not learn Classical Arabic from religious study. Why? Because they don't do Islamic religious study.

-Very many widely spoken modern languages - French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and on and on, have regional dialects that are unintelligible from one to another. It's not unusual.

Back to the hobby, huh? Gotta dog my every post. You said that my pointing it out annoyed you, so I stopped so long as you stopped. I gave you yesterday off. Now, I'm back to pointing it out so long as you're trying to make an argument when you could just make your own contribution and have a civil discussion.

I didn't say that everyone in Italy spoke Italian. I said that Italian is Modern Latin. If you look at it, its derivation doesn't wander too far off from church Latin and it's the dominant language (as in that of the government) of the same place where Classical Latin was the local language. If you prefer to make a case for another Romance language being the better example of Modern Latin, go right ahead. Perhaps you prefer the Romanesco dialect? In Spanish, as in Italian, for instance, many "irregular" nouns are no such thing if you take the long view. They're just Fifth Declension. Spanish has more drift, however, plus the Arabic influence, and other qualities that make Italian the better candidate from a language point of view, as well as geographic, political and social.

No argument about the Arabic either. Just as the common folk didn't learn Latin in the middle ages (other than their own dialects if they spoke a descendant of it), not all Arabs learn Classical Arabic. That doesn't mean that those who do know it don't use it as a lingua franca, it only means that not everyone can. Far fewer people speak Klingon. The big difference between Arabic and Latin in this instance is that there are secular schools in some Arabic speaking countries, which there really weren't in Middle Ages Europe.

I don't disagree either on other places with many languages that aren't easily understood one to another. I don't know why this is an argument for you. I never denied it. I offered up one example. Another is that speakers of various Chinese languages, and even speakers of Japanese with Chinese speakers, have been known to communicate using Chinese characters. Because there is a strong pictorial basis for these, even though the word may be very different, the character in each language, as I understand it, usually represents the same meaning.

SW, your hounding of my posts is obnoxious. You've been so normal recently, I thought you'd gotten a clue. Please continue to post. Just leave me out of it.

Following your "analysis", German must be the modern Latin, because it's the only Western European language that still has case declensions. None of the Romance languages do and English doesn't either.

Don't make things up, I'll have nothing to comment about. That's what grabs my attention, not who the contributor is.

I didn't make any of what I've said up, and you're not the arbiter of my utterances. I did conflate the various forms Latin has taken over the millennia because I was aiming for entertainment, not a scholarly treatise on the evolution of language. If you have other or contrary information to offer to the group, please do. Time after time you present non-contrary facts as supposed arguments to my statements, or else you play moving targets and change the topic from what I actually said, or make up wild oddities and ascribe them to me, to be able to argue against what you've inserted, by attaching my name to your words. As I said, this behavior is obnoxious and much like the little boy who runs up and hits a girl to get her attention, then runs away.

Just leave me alone. I intend to ignore you henceforth other than to point out when you behave similarly. It's not worth trying to engage you in rational discourse. Which is a shame. You seem otherwise intelligent and well informed, and could easily post valuable and insightful comments instead of trying to play gotcha with no credible ammunition.