We’ve all been there before: Tripping over pronunciation that locals make effortless. Like people in any country, Americans can have their own ways of pronouncing things, most notably places. As the good people of Milan, Mich. will attest, local pronunciation can be entirely different to what most expect. So, when the city of Salina, Kan. was the intended resting place for a marvelously-resurrected Holy Grail Jeep Grand Cherokee, semi-local commenter 10001010 was quick to chime in with a pronunciation tip.
I have family in Eastern KS so I know that it’s pronounce Salina and not Salina, like everybody thinks.
Ah yes, that clears things up perfectly. Commenter Bomber can sympathize, as reading 10001010’s comment as a local could feel akin to psychological warfare.
I hate that I read Salina both right and wrong in that sentence
Thankfully, for the sake of everyone, our own David Tracy chimed in to set the record straight.
Suh-Lie-Nuh!
Oh, and in case you might have trouble remembering how to pronounce Salina, commenter A. Barth has an easy trick for remembering that I’m sure you won’t forget anytime soon.
Rhymes with saliva but not with sativa.
So there we go. Click, click, boom. Now you and I both know how to pronounce Salina, which means one down, many more to go on the list of American communities with names that will perplex and amuse non-locals. I supposed I shouldn’t be throwing too much shade, though. After all, I live in the same city as a neighborhood named Roncesvalles. Glass houses and all that.
[Ed Note, I have to give some props to SquareTaillight2002 for this comment:
Of Holy Grails
There is but one
Oh yes they’re tales
Of others, son.
But know what’s true
And that is just
Jeeps are not rare
Even though they rust
Nice. -DT]
(Top image: Logan Diekmann)
I can bet you anywhere your finger lands in Oklahoma, there is a town you don’t know how to say. Here’s a small list:
Heavener [ heev-ner ]
Poteau [ poh-toe ]
Eufaula [ u-fall-a ]
Chickasha [ chick-a-shay ]
What a wonderful state.
Don’t forget Miami [miam-uh]
There is also a Salina, NY outside of Syracuse. Pronounced like saliva.
Not too far from there is the old New Process/New Venture Gear plant. RIP Rust Belt manufacturing.
Near where I live in Southeast Kansas just across the border with Oklahoma is a towned named “Miami” which is locally pronounced as “Mi am Uh”. To each is own.
On the other hand, the city of Poughkeepsie has a perfectly reasonable pronunciation. It’s just the spelling that’s screwed up.
Probably the “ugh” , I never tire of the weird pronunciations of my name.
So what’s the other (wrong) way to pronounce Salina?
Now try Olathe, Kansas……it’s Oh Lay thu (like thud)
My brother taught at Purdue University for a while and claims the locals have five or six ways of pronouncing Lafayette.
What about Buena Vista, Colorado?
Ah yes, BYOON-a Vista. That’s what, four hours drive from Limon (LIE-mon)?
That’s how they pronounce Buena Vista, Virginia, too.
Jumping into the fray for no particular reason, I’ll toss out Brazil, Indiana.
Bray’-zul.
Versailles Indiana… Ver-Sales
Or Saline (suh-LEEN), Michigan. I originally thought it was pronounced like a salty solution.
How do I find the actual value of my 98 Jeep ZJ? Not that Kelly Bluebook crap…I mean the actual connoisseur value?
We should bring together residents of Salina KS, Salina CO, Salina UT and Salinas CA and see if a fight breaks out over pronunciation.
Had a suitemate at college that was from SoCal and given how it drove me mad every time he pronounced it wrong, a fight would most definitely happen.
And bring some folks from Celna, Ohio
And it’s ‘Tea-use-day” not ‘Chewsday” or “Tooozday”.
“It’s pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh, sir.”
Well done, gubbin: I’ve never found a fitting place to use that
Tuesday has no feel…
Along those lines, when I lived in Iowa, the next town over was Nevada…Neh-vay-dah.
There is one in MO, too!
Beyond Roncy, we’ve got Etobicoke too (nevermind the spectrum from Toe-ron-toe to Tranna).
I moved to Canada 20 years ago. I had to relearn how to pronounce Toronto.
Tronno / Tronneaux
(This post is compliant with Canada’s Bill 96)
My relatives would pronounce it as Teaureaunteaut. So many hard o sounds that aren’t possible to spell phonetically in French without going bankrupt in “Wheel of Fortune.” They live near the Outaouais, so there’s always vowels to be found, you can just pluck them off trees.
Out west, where the wild oil grows, I heard the city pronounced as Cherawna.
In NYC there’s Houston Street. It’s pronounced How-stin not hew-stin.
I’m afraid David is wrong, the correct prononciation from the locals is “Suh – Lie – Na”
Source: my daughter goes to college in Salina, and I visit her 2/year.
Here in Illinois there is also a town called Milan that the locals DO NOT pronounce like the real one. I’ve also heard that any town called “Lafayette” is “LAA-FETT”, and don’t even get me started on the largest city in Kentucky.
Looavull?
If the entire word is the in the back of your throat, you’re saying it right
Kentucky has a better one than that. Versailles pronounced ver sells.
The one in Missouri is pronounced almost identically – “ver sales”
There’s also Nevada – “neh vay duh” and don’t even get me started on all the bastardizations of French in the St. Louis area, like “grav-oy” (Gravois)
MY-lin, yes.
My favorite local pronunciation is of Buena Vista: ‘byu-na vis-ta’
I was going to use this one. I have old in-laws down there and was floored when I heard them say it like that.
Well, the second part is often closer to rhyming with Mister when said by those at or close to retirement
Western PA enters the chat… Pittsburgh (Picks-burg), Washington (Warsh-ington) North Versailles (Ver-sales), Carnegie (Kar-neg-y). Yinzers of the world unite!
Kar-NEG-ee was how ol’ Andrew pronounced his surname, and Ver-sales isn’t any worse than Lima, Ohio or Berlin, New Hampshire.
No idea how they get a K into Pittsburgh, though.
Natives of rural Washington state often add the extraneous “r”, too.
And you gotta pronounce that final consonant in Des Moines (but not the first “s” – that would just be ridiculous!)
“Natives of rural Washington state often add the extraneous “r”, too.”
I think they are just using the extra R’s they leave out of the words frustrated and the forward.
(fustrated, foward, Warshington)
You are correct, it is a law of physics. The conservation of R’s.
Then there are names from eastern PA: Schuylkill is pronounced as skoo-kull, for example.
Sure, but that’s a case of English speakers having trouble with a Dutch name. Same thing all over much of upstate New York, too. No one’s adding non-existent consonants there.
Where I’m from, if you’re headin out to do some creek fishin you’ll do best to bring along some grassoppers.
They make fine crick bait.
I for one appreciate dialectal variations in pronunciations.
They are the spoken spices of any particler region.
Good stuff y’all.
Sad I missed this conversation. There is a Salina in Utah too and its pronounced the same way. A friend of mine had a girlfriend from there and we always used to mess with him about going down to Sa-Lee-Nuh to hang out with his girl. Its one of those stupid memories that stick.
These are the same semi-hominins that pronounce BIRTHDAY as “Birt-thay”.
Don’t even get me started on Miami, Oklahoma…
My favorite thing about my time served in Oklahoma were the “honey”, “darlin” and sometimes “sweetie” monikers that got thrown around so casually.
There’s something to be said about the way they pull it off.
It’s somehow charming and disarming at the same time.
The first time a waitress sauntered up to me with a bored look on her face and asked: “what’ll you have honey?”
I was instantly smitten.
I drove through it once when I was moving from Florida to Colorado.
I don’t think I even acknowledged its existence. Kansas was just flat, and the only thing I remember was the first and only literal dust storm, complete with flying tumbleweeds, that I’ve ever seen, let alone drove through.
As a former Kansan, we should now have a debate about how to pronounce the Arkansas River. I’ll give you a hint – Kansans think you should speak like a pirate.
Correct, Arkan-saw River. Life long Arkie who can use multisyllabic words.
Not having grown up in Kansas, it drove me bonkers each time I heard someone say the “Arr-Kansas River”. Then again, those same folks were the ones who would say “libary”. Aside from that, Kansas wasn’t a bad place to live.
Hooray!
Congratulations. Your well-earned trophy is, for some inexplicable reason, available from the bakery in the town of Ouse in central Tasmania.
Roadtrip!
Woohoo! 🙂
Since this is an automotive website, it seems like a good place to let everyone know that Corolla, NC is pronounced “Cuh-rah-la”.
Y’all jes don’ acks me to pronounce it any other way.
While accents and dialects often make me smile, I try hard not to be judgmental anymore: sometime back I looked up the etymology of ‘ask’ and found out that ‘ax’ was an accepted literary variant just a few hundred years ago. Language is usage, they say.