How do you pronounce Missouri? Is it /miz-URR-ee/ or /miz-URR-uh/? There are actually four distinct pronunciations of this word. Linguist Donald Lance of the University of Missouri-Columbia studied the history of this name extensively and found that the pronunciation has always been a matter of some dispute. It’s not just the name of the Show-Me State, though. Many other words usually pronounced with an EE sound at the end have variant pronunciations with a schwa sound at the end, including Cincinnati, Hawaii, Miami, Corpus Christi, Mississippi, spaghetti, macaroni, ravioli, gladioli, and prairie. We previously discussed the pronunciation of Missouri here. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...