was: Re: [thechat] toronto phoons

[matt g]

> From: Madhu Menon <webguru at vsnl.net>
> It's "Pun-jaab", not "Poon-jaab".
> etc.

Thanks for the pointers, Madhu.

Now. Let's move on to the most commonly mispronounced city name in North
America. That's right, it's New Orleans - the city that care forgot.

I like to say that the population of "New Or-leens" is 0, since no-one who
actually lives there pronounces it that way.

Hipsters who think they know the place say "N'Awlins". The problem there is
that they usually over-enunciate it, in the non-Southern way.

It's more correct to just fumble it out - nonchalantly. "N'awwlins". And you
have to have the whole game going for you. You can't just stick it in the
middle of a non-native sentence. It's got to flow with everything else.
Otherwise, it sounds like an Anglo news reader who pronounces Spanish names
with appropriate flair and then goes right back to the middle of the
pronunciation road.

It's also perfectly valid to use the traditional "Neworlins". Note that
there's no pause between "New" and the rest of it. I grew up an hour away,
and that's what I've always called it.

matt g