xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech
Alt text:
Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.
Nice. There's lots of areas I've lived where the locals drop specific consonants from the names of places. So anyone who actually pronounces the place name "correctly" is immediately recognized as new to town.
I can only think if Toron(t)o. Never really thought about other towns doing the same thing.
When I hear someone from that city say their city's name, it sounds like it should be spelled "Trono."
Shibboleths are amazing! Calgary is almost universally pronounced "Cal-Gary" by non-locals, locals say "Calgree"
I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Have you ever seen a Shoggoth? They're horrific and just because they're protoplasmic beings doesn't mean their mispronunciation of English should be celebrated.