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Am-erst MA.
They need a song.
Love that video. Pretty good singing. :-) All that snow–they have time to practice. :-)
That was shot last week, too! ;-)
It’s very well done. It will be a great PR piece!
I must be in a bubble. I’ve heard way more people mispronounce Amherst (see above), and mangle Worcester and Gloucester, than say Banger. But the video is VG.
I will forever put the accent on the second syllable now.
The only reason I knew Bangor, ME existed (until our son considered attending the University of Maine) was that in the early 1980’s Mrs. Tabby and I were on a [charter] airline flight that had to make an unscheduled refueling stop in Bangor on a flight from London (UK) to Los Angeles, California.
Great video and amazingly, I have always pronounced it correctly. Go figure.
Georgia: Houston = House-ton, Cairo = Kay-ro, Albany = All-benny
Kentucky: Pennyroyal = Penny-rile, Versailles = Ver-sales
Texas: Bexar = Bear
Love, love, LOVE it!
Now, how about one for pronouncing Oregon correctly?
Bangor is actually pronounced as follows BANG goah. The R is replaced with a very slight short “ah” sound. Here are a few more for you:
Haverhill (HAV (long “a”) rill
Peabody Pee bid dee
Portland POaht lin
Gloucester GLOSS stah
Worchester WUSS stah
Bar Harbor BAH HAH ba
Kennebunkport ken-ee-bunk-poaht
Salisbury SALLS bree
Concord Kon kid
(I can keep this up all day…)
Third boxcar, midnight train, Destination…Bangor, Maine.
Seeing as the only time I find myself needing to reference the town in question is when I’m quoting Mr. Miller I think I’ll stick with his version. It doesn’t do to edit spelling errors out of direct quotes either.
That’s Bay-are – Long a on the first syllable, accent on the first syllable. Otherwise the cop give you a ticket ’cause you’re not a local.
And Tab cola is TIE-up. I just about got myself arrested over misunderstanding Texan on that one.
How the hell y’all get two syllables out of a three letter word is some kinda magic.
🤦♂️
We get it here in the Puget Sound area because we also have a submarine base (Bremerton, WA), so that other one occasionally enters into conversation.
Two of the most widely mispronounced cities around here are Puyallup and Des Moines.
There’s a Des Moines, WA?
Yeah (pronounced damoynz).
Ah. At first I was going to scoff, but I guess that’s kind of like how we pronounce Calais here.
So… “pile up”?
I was happy to see your post.
In 1967, I took a job at the Unversity of Maine (Orono). On our way to Maine from Oregon, I was telling my wife that the pronunciation of Bangor is certainly Bang-er (accent on first syllable).
At the time, I had a Master’s Degree with a specialization in linguistics. So I was a bit smart alecky about the whole thing.
My wife Marie was smugly pleased, when we got to Maine, that the pronunciation, as you say, is Bangor (with the accent on the second syllable).
I bet you don’t know how to pronounce Willamette and Oregon. I hear those two words mispronounced all the time.
Bangor? I barely knew her!
Maxala,
That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Just one thing. Is Bangor in Maine or New Hampshire? Just Kidding!!!!
Regards,
Jim
Three more: I used to live in Murray, Kentucky, and there were three nearby towns—Athens, KY, Cairo, IL, and Versailles KY—that almost everyone mispronounces.
Betcha ya donut know how they are pronounced.
Okay, smart guy:
Hurricane, Utah
Eureka, Utah
Tooele, Utah
Moab, Utah
Oquirrh Mountains
Oh, and it’s:
OR’gun
n’VADD-uh
kahl’RADD-oh
air’ZONE-uh
EYE’ho
I think you either know ‘King of the Road’ or you don’t.
….Iowa?
Eur-ee-ka?
Two-lee?
Mo-Ab?
Okre?
There is a Bangor in Northern Ireland which, as John Derbyshire reminds us, is indeed pronounced BANG-her. The joke to which #22 (above) refers has a newly married fellow taking his bride there on their wedding night. You can figure the rest.