Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for January 21, 2015

There’s No R in Washington, dammit. Not anywhere along Puget Sound anyway.

My mother, who grew up in that part of the US, would always warsh our clothes.

One of my college roommates was from Oregon. And she’d always comment when people in movies said it wrong(i.e. in “Scent of a Woman” Chris O’Donnell’s character is supposed to be from Oregon and he pronounced it “Or-eh-gone” and my roommate was like “he’s not from Oregon! No one west of the Mississippi pronounces Oregon that way!”

Eh, I’m tarred of this conversation…

And Iran is mispronounced, too. People keep pronouncing it “eh-ran”. The first syllable would be the schwa of Iran.

Ha! Love the Coos Bay bar reference! Scott you are a true Oregonian.

Canaan Valley in WV is not pronounced like the Bible place. The locals say “KA-nane”.Here in PA we have a town “DuBois” that we call “DO-boys”.(The French would say “do-BWAH”.).BTW: I don’t care how much anyone goes on about how great phonetics are. It’s just as arbitrary as spelling..“Buy tha whey, eye doughent kair hough match n-knee won gows ahn abote khow grate fownettix r. Ettz jeust ahz arebetrairy ais spelleng.”.© 2015

“Oar-gun”jus aks Charls Barkly…. (turbul turbul turbul)

As a Washingtonian, this resonates with me. During my years in the military I heard so many people mispronounce Oregon that it grew tiring trying to educate them. As for Warshington, that really grates. Especially when I had to hear it for a half century from my father, who migrated here due to marriage, but grew up in Nebraska and Idaho.

There are many other regional oddities, of course. I recall moving to Boise and being told… “you’re obviously not from here.” Problem was that we pronounced it Boy-zee, and residents say Boy-cee. One last example… Des Moines, Washington residents pronounce the final s in Moines. It’s a tad jarring.

In college, I had a roommate from Versailles, Indiana. He pronounced it “Ver-sales”. I said, “It’s pronounced ‘Ver-sigh.’” He said, “No, ‘Ver-sigh’ is in France — ‘Ver-sales’ is in Indiana.”

With a Kentucky accent, it’s Warshington, just as you’d warsh your clothes. A bordering state is Illinois (pronounce the S, like noise). (This isn’t uniform throughout Kentucky). And it’s Ver-SAILS there as well.

Then there’s a town in Utah called Mantua. We pronounce it “man away”.

There is NO “R” in Washington!!! However, I do agree it’s “Dee-MoineZ”. (Yes, I live here!)