When a new announcer shows up at a station from somewhere else, he's sort of like the new kid at the school, walking down the hall between a line of locals who seem eager to find an excuse to give him the raspberry. He tries his damnedest to learn the particulars and peculiarities of local pronunciations (or, at least, he should), but it's pretty difficult to get it all right until he's lived there for awhile, and he's bound to make the occasional goof.

In fall of 1972, I started working at KORD, a station in Pasco, in south-eastern Washington (one of the Tri-Cities—Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, just down the pike from Hanford). In an Anthropology class at the U. of Washington some years before, there had been mention of the Shoshone tribe of native Americans. The professor pronounced it "Shoh-SHOH-nee." I had also heard that pronunciation used in movies. When reading a commercial on my third day there, I gave the address of the store, which was on Shoshone Avenue. The phone lit up. I was informed by a number of callers that the "correct" pronunciation was "Shoh-SHOHN." No long "e" at the end. Some folks were polite and informative. Others were rude and contemptious.

I looked it up in a pronunciation guide and learned that it was correctly pronounced either way—which way depended on local option. Can't win 'em all.

I did appreciate the callers who were polite and helpful.

But sometimes there just ain't no way of winning. Speaking of "Des Moines," there is a municipality or "suburb" south of Seattle with that name. As an exercise, the teacher of the vocabulary and pronunciation class I took at broadcasting school, asked a few of us to call city officials or stores in the area and ask them how it should be pronounce, "Duh Moyne" as in Des Moines, Iowa, or some other way. The answers came back that some folks pronounced it one way, some another. There seemed to be no general agreement among the people who lived and worked there.

So—whatcha gonna do!??

My older sister's husband (a Canadian) had a whole repertoire of hilarious jokes about a stuffy, goofy Englishman named Lord Chumley. Funny stuff! Conceive my amazement when I learned that "Chumley" was spelled "Chalmonderley."

Or so I've been told. . . .

Don Firth