Can you pronounce these city and state names?
Welcome back to the Learn English podcast. The podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about pronunciation and how to pronounce some tricky city and state names here in the United States.
We all know English is a difficult language and we really have some unique and odd pronunciation.
So on today's episode, I want to go through some city and state names that you might be pronouncing wrong if you are not a native English speaker and also if you are not an American because some of these city and state names are the same in other countries but maybe those countries pronounce them differently.
So on today's episode, we're going to discuss these places.
I'm going to tell you how to pronounce them with an American accent.
So if you're interested in learning more about these names and how to pronounce them, then follow along because we're about to begin!
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find helpful links, and you will also find the vocabulary list. This is the list of words and phrases that I used in the episode, so you can take them and build your English vocabulary.
Now let's talk about some of these weirdly pronounced places.
What I'm gonna do is I'm going to start by talking about the states and then we'll talk about individual cities.
The first set of states that I'm going to talk about are two states that are spelled very similarly but are pronounced very differently.
Do you know what states I'm talking about?
Well, the first one is Kansas.
Kansas is a state that is towards the middle of the US.
And that is how it is pronounced.
Kansas. Kansas. There is another state that is spelled very similarly.
But the pronunciation you're going to hear is not the same.
The second state has Kansas at the end of the name.
But in front of Kansas, it has the letters A -R.
Looking at the spelling, you would think that it would be R -KANSAS.
We already know how to pronounce Kansas.
So that makes sense.
We're just going to call it Ar -KANSAS.
Unfortunately, it is not that easy.
Instead of being Ar -KANSAS, this state is called Arkansas.
Arkansas. Arkansas is a state that is in southern part of the United States.
It's the state where Bill Clinton was governor before he became president of the US and it just has one of those weird pronunciation rules.
I'm not really sure why they're so different.
I can tell you though, that if you think it is a little bit funny, a little bit strange that these two states are pronounced so differently from each other, there are a lot of people in the United States who completely agree with you.
I remember when I was in school, I was learning about the different states with my classmates, learning about the 50 states in the United States.
And I remember some of my classmates laughing and joking and asking why these two states are not pronounced the same way.
Our teacher didn't really have an answer, and I don't really have an answer for you either, but that is how they are pronounced, Kansas and Arkansas.
Now, the next state on our list is another home state of a former president.
This is Barack Obama's home state.
Do you know how to pronounce it?
It is pronounced Illinois.
Illinois. The state of Illinois is in the northern middle part of the United States, and it looks like it should be pronounced Illinois because it does end with an S and normally in English we do pronounce the final S on a word however in this case because it does come from a French word we do not pronounce that instead we are going to leave off that final S and just pronounce it Illinois.
The third state on list has a silent letter in it and it is one of the longer names for a state name and it is Connecticut Connecticut when you look at these spelling it looks like it should be connect t -cut connected cut however we do not pronounce that middle C in front of the T in Connecticut we take it that out and it just becomes a silent letter.
When you pronounce it, you are not going to pronounce that middle C, so it's going to be Connecticut.
Connecticut. The last two states on our list are actually states that border my home state.
I am from California, and there are two states that are right next to my state that have a little bit tricky pronunciation, and even people who are in the United States sometimes mispronounce them.
Let's start with the state that is directly above my state, the state that is north of it.
And that is Oregon.
When you look at the spelling, it might look like you should pronounce it, Oregon.
I've actually heard people from this state correct that pronunciation because it's actually Oregon.
Oregon, the E in the middle of the word is a schwa type vowel sound because it is the unemphasized syllable.
when you pronounce that make sure to take that e and turn it into a schwa sound.
When you pronounce it it therefore becomes oregon oregon the other state that borders my state is the one that is one of the ones I should say that's on the eastern part of my state it is the home of Las Vegas.
And do you know how to pronounce this state?
I have heard a lot of people who are from the east coast mispronounce it.
When you say this state name you are going to say Nevada, Nevada.
A lot of people will look at the spelling, see all of the A's that are in the word, and instead want to say Novada, Novada with a very open jaw sound and a very open A when they are pronouncing that.
I've actually heard people who are from the East Coast pronounce it that way, pronounce it Novada, and any time I hear that I kind of cringe a little.
I know that that person is not from the West Coast, they are not from California or Nevada, because we definitely do not pronounce it that way.
If you do end up going to Las Vegas, if you do want to have your own hangover -type moment and having a fun weekend with your friends, what you want to do is keep your jaw relatively closed when you are pronouncing the A's in the word. You're going to pronounce it more with an American type A than with a Spanish or open vowel sound type A.
So when you pronounce it, you are going to say Nevada.
Nevada. Now let's about some cities that have unique pronunciations.
The first two are in the state of Alabama and our first city is a city that has the exact same name as a city in Great Britain, but it is pronounced very differently than how they pronounce it there.
This city is called Birmingham, Birmingham.
When you look at the spelling it's actually pronounced exactly how it's spelled.
I but if you are someone who has learned British English if you have been to England spent any time there you will recognize that name and you will notice that we pronounce it differently I believe in England it is pronounced Birmingham and they don't really make the H sound at the end of the word if you were coming to the United States definitely pronounce it Birmingham Birmingham.
The second city on our list that's in Alabama has a very common word as the name but it's just not pronounced how we would pronounce it in other contexts.
The word looks like it should be pronounced mobile.
If you again have spent any time in Great Britain you will know that what they call an iPhone or an Android in Great Britain is a mobile.
It's a mobile phone that you can move around and walk around with.
And so they call it a mobile for short in the United States, we never say that you will never call a phone that you'll call it a cell phone instead.
So that word we don't really use in that context, but when it comes to this particular pronunciation, we actually pronounce it differently.
this city in Alabama is not called mobile, it's called mobile mobile if you listen to my pronunciation you can hear that soft eel sound that I'm making at the end of the word it is not I'll instead it's eel mobile mobile Alabama another city on our list is another city that's also in the south but it's in the state of Kentucky it is one of the bigger cities in Kentucky probably one the more well -known cities in Kentucky.
And when you look at the spelling it looks like it should be pronounced Louieville it looks like it has the spelling of a man's name Louie and then will so you would think it would be Louieville however if you are a local if you're from someone from Kentucky you probably have a southern accent and you will not say Louisville.
I'm going to try to say this please note that I have a Californian accent I do not have a southern accent so So this isn't going to be perfect.
But a local from Kentucky or from the South is not going to call it Louisville.
They're going to say Louisville.
Louisville. If you can see my jaw shape on YouTube, you can see that my mouth is very much more closed when I'm saying this.
I'm going to say Louisville.
And it almost kind of feels like I have something in my mouth, like rocks in my mouth or something, because I'm not really moving my mouth.
Maybe I'm chewing on food or something and trying to speak but that's kind of the the accent that you want to have when you Say this word Louisville but you're certainly not in Louisville and you you're certainly not in Louisville or anywhere near that you're in Louisville Kentucky.
That's how we pronounce it Our next city is in the state of Iowa and it's another city that gets its name from a French history and and that is the city in Iowa that is called Des Moines.
When you look at the spelling of this, again, you would try to say that S, like Illinois, but because it does have that French history for the name, we're going to leave off that S, and instead we're just going to say Des Moines.
Des Moines. No S sound at the end.
And next we're going to move to Idaho and we're going to talk about one of the big cities there.
when you see this city name you might think it would be pronounced Boise or Bwase something around those terms but instead it's pronounced Boise Boise so sometimes people will pronounce this word with a Z sound like Boise that's not how we're going to pronounce it we're going to keep it as an S sound so think of the two words boy and sea and just put them together.
Boysey, boysey. Our next one is one of my favorite words just to look at for a city name it is just spelled in such a cute way I think when I see it.
It is a city in Florida and it looks like it should be pronounced kiss -em -ee kiss -em -ee.
However that is not how we're going to pronounce this word instead we're going to call it kiss me.
Kiss me. You will hear a lot of people say, kiss me, I can say that I've heard that pronunciation and I maybe that's why I think the word just looks so cute.
Like you're asking someone to kiss you or something.
But it's not pronounced that way.
That middle syllable is the one that you're going to stress, which means that the eye at the beginning of the word, the kiss part, you're actually going to take that and turn it into that short vowel sound.
So it becomes k uh sim e custom me now we're going to move over to the state of Arizona and one that I think is very deceptive when you look at it so there is a big city in Arizona that looks like it should be pronounced tuxin it is spelled t u c s o n you would think tuxin that seems like a very understandable pronunciation However, the C in this word is not pronounced.
So instead, it is Tucson.
Think of the word 2 or the number 2 and then sawn at the end.
So when you pronounce it, pronounce it Tucson Tucson.
Now we're going to talk about a city in my home state of California.
In California, we are right on the border with Mexico so there are a lot of places here and of course in other states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, that have these names that are based off of Spanish names.
There is a history of Spanish colonization, of the Spanish language being spoken in this part of the United States, so a lot of the places here come from the Spanish language.
If you are not a Spanish speaker, one tip I'm going to tell you is that in these names, when you see a J, a lot of times, it's pronounced more like an H sound in English, and when you see two L's right next to each other, that is pronounced as a Y sound.
That might not be something you know if you don't speak Spanish, if you haven't taken any Spanish classes, so just something to be aware of if you do end up coming to the Southwestern part of the US, one of the four states that I mentioned.
So this city that I'm going to talk about is a city that is right next to San Diego.
San Diego, of course, comes from a Spanish name.
The city that I'm talking about is La Jolla.
The second word in that city name is spelled J -O -L -L -A.
You might think it's Joy -la or something along those lines, but again, we're going to follow those Spanish -speaking rule names.
You're going to actually make that J into an H sound.
The two L's are going to become a Y, So it becomes la hoya, hoya when you pronounce it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you learned a little bit about how to pronounce some of these tricky words that we have here.
I know that it can be confusing because English has weird pronunciation.
And then with the United States and its history of different language influences, we have words from other languages mixed in.
So it can be just overwhelming sometimes.
So I really wanted to do this guide to help you with the trickiest state names, the trickiest city names.
So if you do end up visiting the United States or moving here, you will know how to correctly pronounce them.
I also have a playlist that I have been building of pronunciation guides.
These are past episodes that I did on how to pronounce really tricky English words, I will leave that for you in the description.
so if you liked this episode and you want more practice on Pronouncing some of the most difficult words you can also check out that playlist if you are enjoying these types of episodes if you want More pronunciation tutorials, please let me know leave a comment and tell me about it because as you can see there are a lot more English words that we could talk about and I can plan a lot more episodes like this But of course, I don't know to do that unless you tell me to.
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