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I've never heard anyone, Canadian or American, say "Kay-bec". I have heard the short E be replaced with a short A though....."kwa-beck" instead of "kwe-beck". Not sure which is considered "right?
Kay-beck is what would be closest to the French pronunciation. This is rarely if ever used by people speaking English.
The most common way to say it in English is kuh-beck. You also hear kwuh-beck, and more rarely kwee-bec. Also heard on occasion is kew-beck.
You can always tell a visitor by the way they pronounce local place names.
Time to set people straight, give your best phonetic spelling of the RIGHT way to say your city or state name.
I'll start, tourists say "Hah na lu lu", it's "HO-NO lulu". (Honolulu Hi.)
Han na lu lu is the correct American pronunciation. It's no different than Paris. I don't go around calling it "Pa-ree," or however you'd write that phonetically in French. Iran in English is pronounced with with either a short or long 'I' sound, in Persian it's a long 'E'. So on and so on.
Soquel comes to mind for me. Pretty much everyone pronounces it wrong, even locals. It's either So-kwel or So-kal. It's actually pronounced So-kel. Maybe 20% of the time I hear it it's actually pronounced right.
Proper names are pronounced however the proper authority (whether it's a person's name or a place's name) says it is. It's not subject to "correct American pronunciation" whatever that may be.
I mean, is there really a hard and fast rule that applies to every situation, every time?
This is to all the hicks and hillbillies who live in nebraska (i have to deal with these people)
Its NOR-FUK/FULK, like the ACTUAL city in virginia not nor-fork (hillbilly, inbred way)
Norfok Virginia and Norfolk Nebraska are two different cities. Their names are not the same, even though they are now spelled the same. Hicks and hillbillies in Virginia do not get to name cities in Nebraska. North Fork Nebraska was originally settled on the North Fork of the Elkhorn River, and the name Norfork got erroneously respelled by the Post Office. Norfork is the correct pronunciation, and it always has been.
83% of the adult hicks in Norfolk Nebraska graduated from high school, compared with 78% in Norfolk Virginia. Nebraska hillbillies rank 4th in the nation, with 86% of students finishing high school, compared to 82% in Virginia.
Furthermore, the Virginia Tidewater is in the non-rhotic accent zone, and the city is pronounced NAW-***. (How did you sneak your phonetic respelling past the nannies?)
Inbred Nebraskans know how to capitalize the names of states, and the pronoun I.
Taliaferro County, GA (Tolliver). Don't know how that one works.
There is a long line of blacks, oops African Americans, whose last name is spelled Taliaferro and pronounced Tolliver. My father was a friend of one of them.
Booker Taliaferro Washington, yes, *that* Booker T. Washington, also pronounced his middle name Tolliver, according to the book "Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift" by Jacqueline M. Moore.
But Bangor, Maine.... is not Banger. (the -gor is pronounced like the word gore, not like gerrr).
We have many others that are constantly mispronounced (Calais, Machias, Aroostook, etc), but understandable because they are not very intuitive pronounciations (Cal-iss, Muh-CHY-is).
Being French , I always have problems in the US with the pronounciation of a lot of place names which are French in origin "Des Moines" which would have been pronounced Day-Mwoahne by the people who named it meaning the place of the monks, "Boise" pronounced "Bwahzeh" ( meaning wooded place), Calais of course would be "Kalay" (place in Northern France) .
Maine, Louisiana, Mississippi and most states especially are full of places which are French in etymology and very intuitive to me as I have known those names and their meaning from birth....
But of course the "correct" and original pronounciation has been completely altered by decades /centuries of non French usage...
Same here in the UK where I often find it amusing being corrected for my pronounciation of French placenames like "Beaulieu" ( which the Brits pronounce "Bulee" instead of the correct "Bolieuh" meaning beautiful site )....
Vermont,Lanier, Decatur, Baton Rouge, Juneau, Montpellier, Pierre, Saint Paul, Saint Louis,Delchamps, Auvergne, Belmont, Detroit, Isle au Haut, Cadillac, a few examples of French names which now bear no resemblance to their "correct" pronounciation !
The second T in Toronto is never pronounced by Canadians. The O in Montreal (in English) is pronounced like U in punt. mun-tree-ALL. When speaking English, saying Kay-bec is considered to be an affectation or identifies you as an American.
I find Americans tend to say "mawn-tree-all", instead of the more typically Canadian (English) "mun-tree-all" that you described.
Americans also tend to say "Otta-wuh" whereas locals and other Canadians say "Otta-wah".
Americans: New-found-lund
Canadians: New-fin-lahnd
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