Saturday, December 10, 2011

Using street name pronounciations to prove someone is a winnipeger

Notre dame - its pronounced no ter dame .  Why?  Nobody knows. 

Leila - its not Layla like the song its leela like the futurama and Doctor Who characters.  Why?  Nobody knows!

Lagimodiere - watching an out of towner try to say this word is incredibly fascinating.

Portage - yes its derived from the French word portage, but we don't say it that way.  Again.. no idea why.

Any other street names out there that have unique winnipeg pronounciations?  Let me know in the comments!

7 comments:

Christian Cassidy said...

I worked midnights at a gas station while in university and got lots of tourists dropping in looking for directions. I would say 80% of them pronounced Pembina "Pem BEE nah"

Notre Dame just sounds rude pronounced that way - I usually only butcher half of it and at least say "Not-truh"

Des Meurons actually sounds very nice in French and not even hard for anglos to pronounce. Dezzmurhonz sounds horrible.

Then again, we wouldn't be anglos if we didn't make things in other languages sound bad - it's a sort of badge of honor for some!

Marty said...

The streets should be pronounced by reporters according to local custom not according to political correctness.

In taxiland we always pronounced Day Mur-on without the s-es.

The downtown Notre Dame was anglosized so as to distinguish it from the St Boniface one.

A rural example, La Broke-er-ee is the accepted pronunciation of that town in these parts to the point no one even understands what a reporter is saying when they try the french style. Same goes for "laj-a-mode-e-ay". No one knows what the reporter is saying when they try to be cute about it.

Anonymous said...

St. Boniface is abundant w/ fucked up street names. Thibault anyone?

Unknown said...

I enjoy the pronunciations of street names on the bus announcing stops, cor-ee-done, pem-bee-nah, etc. obviously not a job done locally.

reedsolomon.matr1x at gmail.com said...

unknown: they probably use software for that. They've adjusted some of the more glaring errors.

I forgot about Pem BEE nah. I've heard that one before. And yeah Des Meurons really had no pressing reason to be anglicized.

Most people just say "Lahdge" for Lagimodiere these days.

reedsolomon.matr1x at gmail.com said...

Hah, now I remember where I heard Pembeena recently. The comedy news show This is That on CBC had an episode where they claimed somebody as being from Pem BEE na Manitoba. Totally ruined the joke. Generally a great show though. I totally recommend it.

Emma said...

All true! Dezz Mee-you-rons sounds so horrible.

On a related note, realizing that St. Mary Ave and St. Mary's Rd are two different roadways was something of a rite of passage for me!