6mo ago

My lord

24 comments

Gonna pick this thread to drop some random trivia. A county near mine is named Montague. Being a good little English Lit nerd, upon moving to Texas I proceeded to pronounce it "Mon Tuh Gyoo" (rhymes with "view"), because in Romeo and Juliet that's the only pronunciation that preserves the meter and rhyme scheme. I was quickly informed that it's "Mon Tayg" (rhymes with "vague"). This is not insane, but it is very annoying.
- This pronunciation is very Texas, and hilarious 😂
- I used to live near a town called Nevada (nuh-vay-duh), and boy was it fun to rule them up by calling it Nevada (neh-vah-duh, like the state)
  
  Don't forget Italy with two syllables, Mexia which is neither Mex-ee-uh nor Muh-hee-uh, but rather Muh-hay-uh, and a million others. I don't think anyone who ever moved in from out of state has pronounced Waxahachie quite right on the first try.
  
  Oh man, that sounds like you're referring to the one in Missouri. I riled up a number of folks that way.
- They're saying their own town name wrong but also I'd say mon tayg for fun
  
  I don't even know if it's wrong, exactly. I'd have to look up who it was actually named after and try to find some evidence of how they pronounced it, and... meh. Billy Shakes was also prone to mangling "foreign" names to fit his writing, through some combination of general ignorance or IDGAF (must... resist... temptation to launch tirade against the subtle elitism of anti-Stratfordians...).
  It's just that almost literally everyone in America who ever hears that name hears it from Romeo and Juliet.
- I had to go to Mobile, Alabama for work once. I kept calling it mo-bul.
  All the locals called it mo-beel and kept trying to correct me. Fun times.
  
  Not moh-bile? That's my go to.
  
  Mo-bih-lay
- I went to a Spanish immersion school, so I was familiar with the pronunciation of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay - it's pronounced like "mon tay vee day oh." One day I was checking out a map of Minnesota, and I find a town called Montevideo! I pay it a visit just to check it out since it's pretty close, and everyone calls it "monna video." I lost interest pretty quick.
- As a german, I would pronounce it like "Montag", the german word for monday, just with more stress on the 2nd syllable, and less on the first, so Monntaag, (so "Mon Tayg"). And therefore I understood it as a reference to garfield.
  
  Oh really? Parts of Texas had a big influx of German immigrants in the 1800s. I wonder if that's why the pronunciation is similar to German?