Street Name Pronunciation (Avalon, Montgomery, Clark: house, famous, rain)

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by mcguirk

No one says Passyunk like Manayunk, except for transplants from the suburbs.

Originally Posted by Summersm343

Sorry I like to pronounce things the way they are actually pronounced... I don't like sounding illiterate. It's very clearly Pass-yunk. Passhunk?! WTH?

It's a generational divide more than anything else. I say Passayunk too, although some of my older relatives have "corrected" me.

And aren't you from Ridley Park, McGuirk? Last time I checked, that's a suburb....

[soug]

Yea, the only people I've ever heard pronounce it "Passhunk" are a bit older.

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by soug

Yea, the only people I've ever heard pronounce it "Passhunk" are a bit older.

I hear lots of kids in their 20s who grew up in the neighborhood say "passhunk". But then people in SP have crazy ways of pronouncing all kinds of words that have nothing to do with how it's spelled - "Dickerson" for Dickinson, Booveer for Bouvier, gabagool for capocollo (misspelled in the US as capicolla), rihGUT for ricotta, etc, etc.

[soug]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

gabagool for capocollo (misspelled in the US as capicolla), rihGUT for ricotta, etc, etc.

There was a thread about this over on the NJ board. Some people were saying that these aren't actually mispronunciations, but rather the "true" ways to say these words in the various dialects/varieties/languages that Italian immigrants spoke and passed down to their kids and grandchildren. The thinking is that standard Italian didn't become prevalent until relatively recently. How accurate this is, I have no idea, but it's an interesting theory.

[nybbler]

[quote=Avalon08;26016876[
You can always tell which TV reporter is new in town by the way they mis-pronounce local names.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, like pronouncing "Broad Street" as "Avenue of the Arts", or "Delaware Avenue" as "Columbus Boulevard". Philadelphians do not recognizes street name changes, except (grudgingly) Kelly Drive for East River Drive. I doubt anyone in Philly calls West River Drive "MLK Drive".

(oh, and you're all wrong, it's Passhyunk)

[rotodome]

I've even seen Sansom spelled "Samson" on SEPTA bus signs, if that's any indication of how frequently that one is mispronounced.

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by soug

There was a thread about this over on the NJ board. Some people were saying that these aren't actually mispronunciations, but rather the "true" ways to say these words in the various dialects/varieties/languages that Italian immigrants spoke and passed down to their kids and grandchildren. The thinking is that standard Italian didn't become prevalent until relatively recently. How accurate this is, I have no idea, but it's an interesting theory.

Yeah, i've heard that theory. I'm not buying it.

My family is from Basilicata (basically the arch of the boot). It doesn't get more southern than that. The Neapolitan language is still widely spoken (i'm differentiating here from the Neapolitan accent in Standard Italian). Most Italian regional languages are still spoken. You can listen to them on the street in Italy or on youtube. They don't sound anything like what you hear in South Philly (or New York for that matter).

I think what really happened is that kids picked up bits and pieces of the language from listening to their parents or grandparents but never spoke it much themselves and were, for all intents and purposes, native english speakers and with an ear for english and all that emphasis on the second to last vowel in italian languages it's easy to miss the enunciation of the final vowel. Not being able to read or speak italian fluently it's easy to mispronounce words that you can't spell. Which is why if you hear 2nd or 3rd generation Puerto Rican kids the way they drop the "s" in "este" or "estudiantes" is more pronounced than native speakers of PR Spanish - and those kids have the benefit of Univision - which didn't exist for italian immigrants 100 years ago.

Clearly pronouncing the final vowel sound is important in most romance languages because it indicates number and/or gender of the thing you're talking about. The South Philly pronunciation is more like Catalan /Occitan/Lombard of the northern Mediterranean than it is like the southern Italian languages that people are claiming (which is why I think that theory is bogus).

Drives me nuts when people say cannolis and paninis. As in, "I went to Isgro's and I got a dozen cannolis". It's an italian word that ends in "i". It's already plural. Also big pet peeve - when people spell "pizzeria" (which would be the proper italian spelling) as "pizzaria" which would mean "we only have one pizza so you better hurry up before we close up shop".

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by rotodome

I've even seen Sansom spelled "Samson" on SEPTA bus signs, if that's any indication of how frequently that one is mispronounced.

I know people not native to Philly who also mispronounce it even though they can spell it for correctly. I don't know what it is about that street that is so difficult for people to get off their tongues.

[nybbler]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

Yeah, i've heard that theory. I'm not buying it.

My family is from Basilicata (basically the arch of the boot). It doesn't get more southern than that.

Sure it does: Sicily. And the dropping of the final vowel (as in "prosciutto" -> bruzhute or "capicollo" -> gabagol) is attested there from early in the 20th century, as is the changing of 'c' to 'g' and 'p' to 'b' ("degradation of the surd into the sonant", as the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica puts it).

[Abbey Anders]

How is Camac St pronounced?