Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed

I'm a sucker for idiosyncratic local pronunciations of place names; pittsburgh's "North Versailles" (/vər'sejlz/), Manhattan's "Houston St." (/'hawstn/, not /'hjustn/), etc.

Today I finally found some evidence for the "right"* way to pronounce "Joralemon St." in downtown brooklyn:
http://www.learnglish.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/eng/5491/Brooklyn-Street-names
says it's /dʒər'æləmən/, not my (and others') guess of /ˌdʒorə'lɛmən/. Likewise
http://omababe.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-holidays-where-we-come-from.html
And it has to be, to make the amphibrachs work out in the poem here:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/04/14/poetry/print.html

"Schermerhorn", though... Everyone seems to agree that the main trick is that the ch gives a hard /k/, but there's quibbling over the vowel. I'm most fond of what I hear train operators say, unmistakably, as they pull into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop: /'skɪməˌhɔn/, something like "Skimmahawn" if I had to spell it out.

*scare quotes there so's they don't revoke my Descriptivist License

P.S. Doahsclosinstandclearad'closindoahsplease

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Aw damn I just heard "Shimmahawn" on the train on the way home just now. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY YOU GUYS.
Tags: brooklyn, dialect, linguistics
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