Pronunciation versus Spelling

[Firelock76]

New RAH-shll?  Man, that's a new one on me!  Never heard it pronounced that way before.

I think I'll invoke my God-given right as a New Jersey native to pronounce things anyway I please!

New Rah-shll.  They never pronounced it that way on the old "Dick vanDyke Show"!

[Deggesty]

From what my wife told me, it is RAH-shll. (I do not know how to put the schwa in after the "sh" or the "sch".) For the benefit of the unlearned, a schwa is a very short vowel that is usually represented by an upside-down lower case "e."

[Firelock76]

OK Johnny, you've got me.  Just how DO you pronounce it?

New RO-chelle, or New Ro-CHELLE?

Wayne

[Deggesty]

For the benefit of all who caught two spelling errors in the above when receiving it via email, I failed to proofread it, but did correct them before leaving it on the forum.

[Deggesty]

This is a new thread, created to avoid the off-topic police.

Quoting the Sage of Upstate New York: "Reminds me of the "g" in Samoan - which is pronounced as "ng," but not as hard as in English.  The prime example is the capital of American Samoa, Pago Pago, which the uninitiated usually say as "Paygo Paygo" or pronouncing the first syllables as in hunger pangs.  In reality, it's "Pahn go Pahn go, with the g kinda held on the back of your tongue.  Hard to describe..."

I have been told that when a printing press, supposedly complete with all the necessary fonts was shipped to Samoa, somehow all of the letters "g" were lost enroute--therefore it was impossible to spell the name of the chief city correctly.

Of course, we can think of many place names in our country which are spelled in ways that confuse the uninitiated--Worcester ("Wooster"), for instance. Until my wife corrected me (she lived and worked in New York City for eleven years), I accented the ultimate syllable of New Rochelle until she told me that the penultimate syllable is accented.

Wow! at times I need a grammar check, for if I am composing quickly my fingers may omit a necessary word. But--I would not trust anyone who went through high school in the last forty years, for it seems that much that I learned is no longer taught. Whoever compiled the grammar check in Word Perfect does not understand the English language.