And, shoot, even Missourians can't agree on how to pronounce Missouri.

The only Missourian who pronounces it "Miser-rah" is running for office and needs votes in the southern part of the state.

A few years back we were driving up I95 in Maine, headed for New Brunsiwck and Nova Scotia. We noted some black clouds on the horizon, so as is the habit, I reached for my portible scannder and punched up the NOAA transmitter for the area. At the time, they were still using the first generation voice synth units called "Igor" bcause of the odd stilted way it accented things.

Now, because of the huge area to be covered, NOAA had one voice synth unit feeding all the NOAA transmitters in the whole state, and thereby, all the various areas got full reports. Tended to make for a long report cycle, but it got the job done.

Anyway, someone had apaprently made some adjustments to Igor, because when it came to announcing the weather for Bar Harbor, it took on, more or less the local pronunciation;
... "Bah Hahbah".

I swear, I nearly lost control of my rig, I was laughing so hard. The pro, with the stilted accent was just too much for a road -punchy traveler.

LOL very true.

Our teeny tiny community in NH ended up with a large community of Bosnian refugees about 8-9 or so years ago. Working in the school it has taken a while to master some of the names. Many of them suffering from a lack of vowels.

Arabic does not permit three consonants in a row, insisting on interpolating a vowel sound somewhere in the cluster.

'Strength' comes out in various ways, mostly something like 'Is-tren-geth'.

Sort of like the way Americans get tongue-tied over the consonant clusters of Slavic languages. I'm sure you recall the emergency shipments of vowels to the Balkans, no?

I had a professor in college who was from India. He could not make the /p/ sound. For instance family would be "pambly" I can't remember now if he could do p's in the middle or ends of words, but he couldn't at the beginning. I think sometimes it isn't so much an English sound in isolation but the combination of sounds and the fact the English, unlike most other languages has a lot of vowel sounds.

I'm still working on getting that reaction tuned down to the level at which I can face 'coup-de-grace' pronounced 'coo-da-gras'. I still find it bothersome, though, when it comes from the mouth of a boss....

The spelling was changed over the years. Auf deutsch, rot (meaning red) is still pronounced like "rote" with a rolled "r" and a sibilant "t".

I suspect back then, it kind of sounded like "rhoads" does now without the German sounding consonants.

Similarly, at least half of my high school was made up of students of pure Italian ancestry. Most were second generation Italians. All pronounced their names with anglicized vowel and consonant sounds. No one sounded like Luciano Pavarotti singing Rigoletto's Questa Quella.

"Also, there is a town in Kentucky called Versailles-we pronounced it Ver-sails. I remember at some point realizing that the palace in France pronounced Ver-sie had the same spelling. It happens. I doubt I would throw a fit though if somebody from France used the French pronunciation."

LOL, I beg to differ. I moved to Lexington (right next door to Ver-sails) when I was eight, and my parents and I were very firmly corrected for pronouncing it "Ver-sie." Also on the pronunciation of "Loo-vul."

On the larger point though, one thing English speakers fail to recognize when we criticize ourselves for pronouncing foreign words wrong, is that non-native speakers - even those who speak English very well - pronounce little things in English wrong all the time, and most of us don't really notice it or care. For example, many non-native speakers have a very hard time with the "th" sound in English, because it doesn't exist in a lot of languages. Depending on where it falls in a word, most fudge it as roughly a "d" or a "t" or a "z" sound. Never noticed? Honestly, I only have because I spent a year teaching English overseas. In general as long as we understand, we don't notice minor mispronunciations, which is as it should be.

American pronunciation of English place names, even those used locally, vary from the English pronunciations (with the exception of some parts of New England, e.g., US: Nor-wich, UK: Nor-ich; US: War-cester, UK: Wis-ter (or Wus-ta).

Maybe a local pronunciation will make me ask the speaker to repeat what he said as I try and figure out how the sounds correlate with the letters I'm trying to spell out in my head, but it doesn't usually take too long or too much effort. Far more difficult to my ear are some local dialects that can, for example, change 'beagle hound' into 'beetle-ownd' (WV).

Pronunciation of Hawaii

For one thing the second consonant is a labial fricative that isn't phonemic in English. It also includes a glottal stop that isn't phonemic in English, either.

Ask a local what languages are spoken in Finland and the Netherlands** and you will almost certainly get very different answers, not just different pronunciations, than an American would give you.

* Use European vowel sounds and pronounce each letter independently and you will at least get close enough to be understood.
** Suomi and Nederlandse

I grew up in a part of Massachusetts that had a high proportion of French-Canadian immigrants. The French names were uniformly mangled: Pellesier (pel-es-ee-ay) was more commonly pronounced (pell-is-er), for example. Even the French-Canadian immigrants succumbed to the pressure for uniformity of pronunciation.

As a kid I learned a bit of St. Louis French (long story) which isn't 20th century Parisian French. We'd have pronounced your example somewhere in between those two you've offered, which was a perfectly good French pronunciation in the early 18th century in southwestern France.

I doubt I would throw a fit though if somebody from France used the French pronunciation.

No, but you'd probably think that an American who used that pronunciation was either ignorant or affected.

I can see a complaint if we were using a completely different name, but languages are tough. Even when you speak the same one-Louisville was one that I was actually thinking about. Also, there is a town in Kentucky called Versailles-we pronounced it Ver-sails. I remember at some point realizing that the palace in France pronounced Ver-sie had the same spelling. It happens. I doubt I would throw a fit though if somebody from France used the French pronunciation.

I think it would be nice if journalists etc tried to use correct pronunciations, but I am not sure it is anything horrible if they fail.