Iowa Towns with Odd Pronunciations
- Thread starter Colossus
- Start date
Having lived there in some of my earlier days, I think it's odd when people want to pronounce it Bway-nah Veesta.
At one Iowa radio station where I was news director, they kept a pronunciation guide in the control room. It listed the correct pronunciation for every Iowa town/city and county. It came from the journalism dept. here at ISU. Wonder if anyone still does that?
No, small town in north central Iowa. I looked for one in the other small town radio station where I next worked. They looked at me like I was nuts, and proceeded to butcher Iowa town names.
I always had nightmares that I was going to have to pronounce "Ocheyedan" on the air and mess it up. I must have looked it up two dozen times and I still don't know how to pronounce it.
Sorry, but who pronounces Urbandale that way? I've never heard it pronounced that way.
Fort Dodge -- Locals call it Furdodge. We always called Buena Vista Bunie for short, when I was growing up in eastern IA. Two that I always hear mispronounced on the radio are Maquoketa (pronounced Ma-coke-eta) and Quasqueton (pronounced Quas-ka-ton, I believe). My uncle pronounces Cedar Rapids as Cedar Rabbits (and he isn't kidding).
When I was growing up one of the neighbor kids actually came home crying because she thought her dad said he was taking her to SEE THE RABBITS.
There were a couple of guys from Maquoketa on my floor my freshman year and they pronounced it Ma-KWO-ke-ta. Apparently, the natives are pronouncing it wrong? I swear some of you guys are making this stuff up just to be able to add to the thread. :biglaugh:
- Mar 27, 2006
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I know what you mean. I remember having a conversation with the station manager where I worked about this topic. We went round and round on the correct pronunciation of "Osage."
One of my old high school football coaches referred to Ottumwa as "earth's butthole" and the "O" in the middle of the field is where it gets an enema.
They do, and it is so weird, because some people claim it's "townies" who do it, but I know people who have lived in the town their whole lives and pronounce it correctly (in my opinion) Kee-uh-kuck.
Everyone I knew from that area called it Ma-COKE-e-ta. I also lived by the Maquoketa River growing up and everyone pronounced it Ma-COKE-e-ta.
Another one is Delhi - pronounced DELL-HI, not like New DELL-E in India.
Just to pull these two unrelated ones together, I had some friends in Delhi who were totally floored that we regularly called Maquoketa Valley (their school, in our conference at the time) Mac Valley. They said they had never heard that before.
