That's NOT how you say it !!!

[Hillwalker]

When in Maine

Ovah hear in mayne we have Coos Canyon in Byrun that is pronounced cuze. We'uns also pan for gold in the Swift River that runs through Coos Canyon in Byrun.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Wikipedia, not that it is authoritative, also includes the diaeresis...

Coös County, New Hampshire

Tim

 

[TEO]

While those two dots above the second in consecutive vowels may look like an umlaut, it is not. Rather it is a diaeresis, which signifies a hiatus--where the two vowels create two separate sounds. (Readers of the New Yorker will be familiar with it.) Coös is a great example of why the diaeresis should still be commonly used. Sadly, too few people do.

 

[Kevin Judy and Emma]

Sorry, Chip! 8 )

What prompted me to look for this thread is I hate saying "Karen" (for Cairn) or kayerrn, like a drawn out, one syllable word. I like saying Karn.
Turns out I might be right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wiki
It comes from the Irish: carn (plural cairn) or Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn).
So it's a Carn and they are Cairn. That's what I'm going with. So sue me.

Cairn is pronounced "kayrn"...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cairn

Click the little audio symbol beside the word to hear it pronounced.

KDT

 

[Chip]

It's cairn is pronounced "kayrn"...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cairn

Click the little audio symbol beside the word to hear it pronounced.

KDT

Not debating that as the plural. "I could see many cairn." I'm Scottish (in some part, my name is wholely, anyway) and I'm going to use Carn as the singular, and then be corrected, and then need to explain the Irish and Gaelic origin .

It comes from the Irish: carn (plural cairn) or Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn).

 

[Raven]

but way over here we deal with the likes of Tuscarora, Tonawanda, Lackawana, Cheektowaga and Scajaquada on a daily basis!!

I've lived in two of these places, drank beer in three of them, and drove the Scajaquada daily. People used to say if you couldn't pronounce "Scajaquada," you're weren't a Buffalo native.

Personally, on those rare occasions when I wanted people to know I was native, I just wore my Zubaz pants.

I often see Coos written Cohos.

 

[timmus]

I often see Coos written Cohos.

Like the Cohos trail... That could be related.

BTW I like old threads, that's how we realize some people had left VFTT (or got banned, or self-banned)

 

[Billy]

Hey, I'm from Rhode Island, where mispronouncing words is the law. I used to say KancaMANgus too. Not sure where or when, but someone pulled me aside about 10 years ago and quietly informed me there's no second "n". So now sometimes I gently pass along the same info to people when they mispronounce that word. Sometimes they smile and say thanks, but sometimes they look at me like I'm some Upper West Side snob who just told them they ordered the wrong wine with the fish. And they have a point...I have a Providence accent, so who am I to throw stones.

Besides, as long as people continue to use "irregardless" in everyday conversation, mispronouncing Kancamagus is small potatoes.

 

[eddie]

Oh... What's that creek in NY that the NOrthway crosses about a dozen or so miles north of Albany.. The one whose name is so long that you don'T have time to read it as you drive by.

Kayaderosseras Creek. I used to go to Boyhaven scout camp on the banks of that creek.

I was raised in Schenectady, NY but have lived in Pittsburgh PA for the last 27 years. Western PA has a whole dialect of its own. Carnegie is car-NAY-ghee. The word 'creek' here is pronounced 'crick'. All of the natives talk like they have marbles in their mouths like they do in West Virginia. They sound like Jag-offs!

 

[Jason Berard]

Like the Cohos trail... That could be related.

or http://cohase.org/

 

[Dana]

Many of the Indian names got garbled through translation, too. Take the "land between the rivers", Eee-en-wah. French settlers wrote it down phonetically (by their standards). When english speaking settlers moved in, they pronounced "Illinois" phoneticaly, by their standards.

 

[arghman]

Can I get a confirmaion on "Coe-Oss" (ryhmes with Row-Boss) ? I pronounce Coos like it rhymes with booze.

For issues like this, aside from talking to locals, turn to the Julyans' "Place Names of the White Mountains"

Perhaps I should have transcribed the entry directly:

Coös County

The largest and northernmost of New Hampshire's ten counties, Coös county takes its name from "coo-ash," an Abenaki word signifying "white pine"; the Western Abenaki Indian group living in the area were known as the "Coo-ash-aukes," or "dwellers in the place of the white pines," the name sometimes also transliterated as Cowasuck. Originally, the "white pine place" was the broad river meadows near Newbury, Vermont, and Haverhill; this area was known as "the Cohos." When the meadows near Lancaster began to be settled, that area was known as "the Upper Cohoss." And still later, when the area around Colebrook was being settled, the famous mapmaker Philip Carrigain bestowed on that region the title of "the Cohoss above the Upper Cohoss." The county was created in 1803, but references to the name appear earlier, and in varied forms. The umlaut over the second "o" signifies it is to be pronounced as a separate syllable, COH-ahs, unlike the name of Coos Bay in Oregon, there spelled without the umlaut and pronounced COOZ.

 

[Mac]

Helon Taylor Trail

Got this one wrong last weekend.

"HEElon Taylor" with emphasis on the "HEE".

 

[bristlecone]

Interesting thread. Questions:

1. vly = vlei, and both rhyme with 'fly' - right? And did we get that from the dutch?

2. I'd say that one could paddle from RAquette lake into FOR-ked (pronouncing a short vowel in the second syllable) lake. But perhaps some people would paddle from raQUETTE into Fork'd?