LAST EDITED ON Mar-20-14 AT 09:58 AM (EDT)
 
>Huffpost had an amusing article today on the
>17 everyday words most of us tend to mispronounce.

The mention of the Houston Street thing in NYC reminds me of something similar.

In Portland, Oregon, there's two local pronunciations which are similar to that, in that a non-local can be marked by their ignorance of it. One is the Willamette River -- not William-ette, but "wilLAMette", with a short "a" and stress on the second syllable.

The other is Couch Street. The uninitiated are very likely to pronounce it per the item of furniture with which it shares a spelling, but Portland locals know that it's actually pronounced the same way as a (perhaps mildly obscure) slang term for female genitalia.

---

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

---