Pronunciations? (San Antonio, Austin, San Marcos: high school, moving, cities)

[Unclemeat]

There's quite a few that sound really odd to me... just curious if anyone knows if there's a story, if it's just Austin being goofy, or if the rest of the country is saying it wrong. Most of these are roads/cities. And forgive my pitiful phonetic spellings, but if you've been here more than a few months you should know what I'm getting at.

Manchaca = Man-shack
Manor = main-er
Guadalupe = Gwad-a-loop
Burnet = burn-it
San Marcos = San Marcus
San Jacinto = San Jacinto (with the hard "J" sound, like "Jew")
Cesar Chavez = See-sar Cha-vez (like the "ch" sound in "nachos")

Any others? Those spring to mind. These are things I think about while sitting in traffic.

[ImOnFiya]

There's also Bowie High School which is called "Boo-ie".

I think it's a Texas thing, San Antonio has a couple too..

Bexar County which pronounced as "Bear"
Boerne County, Boerne Stage which pronounced as "Bur-ney".

[h886]

It's part of keeping Austin weird. It's how you can tell who just moved here and who has had time to learn the lingo (which yes, is all pronounced incorrectly.) Just one of those things.

[TexasHorseLady]

Part of it is people's names that we, out of respect, pronounce the way they do or did (Bowie, for example, or May-nor, not Man-or).

Part of it is just how the names evolved through verbal abbreviation and familiarity (Man-shak - which is mispelled anyway, because the man who it's named after spelled it Menchaca, not Manchaca, or Gwad a loop).

And then there's the problem similar to one I had when I was a child and learning to read, and it drove me nuts that Chevrolet was not pronounced Chev-ro-let but Chev-ro-lay. Just WRONG!

But, basically, good rule of thumb for moving somewhere? When in Rome.

[eichlerfan]

I've learned the correct pronunciations of many of the names since moving here, but still need help with Balcones. Anyone want to help me out on that one?

[jobert]

The "Slaughter" in Slaughter lane actually rhymes with the word "Laughter". Schlumberger in NW Austin is pronoucned au francais for some reason.

[mimimomx3]

Originally Posted by eichlerfan

I've learned the correct pronunciations of many of the names since moving here, but still need help with Balcones. Anyone want to help me out on that one?

That would be BAL-cone-ees.

[mickey65]

Alvarado = Al-va-ray-do
Guadalupe = Gwad-a-loop

[LeoZ]

Hahahaha yeah we totally do have some funny pronunciations. In fact when I was a kid I thought Manchaca and Manshack were too different roads. Confused the hell out of me once I started driving!

I also like (read: hate) how we have like three and four different names for the same highways.

[eichlerfan]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

That would be BAL-cone-ees.

Thanks.