accent or mispronounciation? (was RE: [thechat] Chile's tennisfighting for the medals)

[Luther, Ron]

Joel D Canfield asked about pro^Bnun^Bciation:


Hi Joel,


Reminds me of a philologist I once knew.  (Weird people, philologists!) 
Anyway ... one summer he decided to take a vacation and drive through 
Kentucky tracing French roots in town names. 

(Yeah ... What wuz he thinkun?)

Anyway, he got lost looking for this place:

http://www.versaillesky.com/

... so he stopped to ask directions.  

He knew he was close. He couldn't be more than 30 miles away. But nobody he asked had a clue where he 
wanted to go.  No one had never heard of the place!

Finally he broke out a map and pointed where he wanted to go.

The locals looked much relived.

"Oh!", they said, "You mean ver-SAY-lees!"

I'm still surprised he didn't kill them all on the spot.


RonL.
(Okay. I finally know (I think) how to pronounce Goethe.  [A long 
time ago I was told it was pronounced 'Ger-ta'.] But is Thomas Mann 
pronounced 'man' or 'mon'?  And what about that Hermann Hesse? Is 
that 'Hess'? Or is it 'Hess-a'? I love their books, but I'm not sure 
I do them justice when I 'ask for them by name'.)