From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...

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It's Pronounced OR-uh-gun

May 15, 2005

For several months, I've had no working needle on my record player. With more than 1,400 albums, this is a serious state of affairs. Yesterday, finally, I took care of this, and what a treat it is....again...to play vinyl.

Tonight's featured LP was "Oregon - Live" (1975).

And, so...to reprise the saying of my circa-1970 6th grade classmates at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Paul Street and Marcus Deranian, "Oooh Chah!

BTW, that's pronuonced OR-uh-gun; NOT Or-Ah-GON, as the respectful but clueless MC on the disc said.

That mistake is like a $800 Burberry raincoat in Seattle; it screams "outsider." I say this as a former NW outsider, who was once severely mocked by a greatly insecure, loudmouthed female Oregonian at a West Seattle wedding (bridegroom Adam W., are you still out there?) for pronouncing Philomath (a small Oregon town on the way to Waldport, on the coast) as PHILO-Math. In fact, it's - somewhat perversely - Phi-LO-Muth.

Other tips to NW visitors and relocatees....Puyallup, SE of Seattle, is "Pew-AL-lup," AND Sequim, on the Olympic Peninsula, is Sk-WIM."

Don't say you weren't warned.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 15, 2005 09:51 PM

Comments:

A few of the things I've pronounced wrong when I first moved there, and got mercilessly chided for by the locals:

Blue Ridge Mtn. foothills: The small town of Buena Vista is "BEW-na VIS-ta" (regardless of what your high school Spanish textbook says about "BWAY-na").

Further east in VA: Botetourt County is "BOT-a-TOT" (which sounds suspiciously like trafficking in stolen children, to me, but that's how they say it!)

Down in Atlanta, be sure to pronounce one of their flagship products as "ko-KO-la" and a certain major downtown thoroughfare as "HOW-ston" Street - to Atlantans, it's those damn TEXANS that's mispronouncing the word "Houston".

Oh, dang, I haven't even gotten STARTED on Southern California, Central Pennsylvania, Louisville, Kentucky, Las Vegas, Nevada...

I might have to do an entire blog post myself for all the places I've lived and odd pronunciations I've had to learn!

Posted by: Ponytailed Conservative at May 16, 2005 06:00 AM

Where did you buy the needle for your record player? They're not easy to find. I still enjoy playing my LP's, too, especially classical and folk albums that are just not to be found in CD. Like you I like the way the records sound, too.

Posted by: J.A. at May 16, 2005 03:24 PM

J.A., I got my new cartridge and needle at Definitive Audo in the 6200 block of N. Roosevelt Way in Seattle. If you only need a needle, not a cartrdge too, then J & S, on NE 65th St. (very near Definitive Audio, just east of Roosevelt Way) is another place to go.

Posted by: Matt R. at May 16, 2005 03:40 PM

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