I avoided proper nouns. Who would guess that Lafayette VA is pronounced la FEET? The story behind the pronunciation of "Appalachian" is interesting. Washington Irving thought that the US would be taken more seriously abroad, if place names derived from American Indians were changed to names that sounded as though they were derived from Latin. So he proposed changing the Allegheny mountains to to Alleghenia mountains and the Apalachy mountains to the Appalachian mountains. And the reason the mountains were called the Apalachy mountains in the first place is also fun. The indians, who lived in northern Florida, conned French explorers into believing that they controlled vast territory on both sides of the mountain chain, and so that's what the explorers put on their maps.

It is true that the book was intended for radio, but NBC and CNBC would benefit from its use. If Wolf Blitzer would just learn to say eLEKtoral instead of elecTORal, it would take some of the pain from what is going to be a very painful upcoming election. OF course, W.B. is not NBC's responsibility.