And Louisville (pronounced Lewisville).

And, Lewisville (Monroe County) pronounced, drum roll please, "Lewisville." ;-)

A quick Google search returned a list from OUr university. The preface explaining the history was interesting.

http://scrippsjschool.org/pronunciation /

That's a nice list, but they have a town wrong from near me. Nevada is pronounced with a long A. Nuh-VAY-duh. The list also omits Marseilles, which is pronounced Mar-SALES. Also, a lot of people call McCutchenville "McCutchensville" (or Scutch).

I used to hear Cincinnat-uh a lot, but not lately. Even had a professor at OU that insisted on that pronunciation. Like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Linguistically speaking, there is no such thing as a "strong accent." We all have accents. It's just that some accents are closer to the Midwestern dialect that has become a sort of standard. What you really mean when you say "stronger accent" is the degree of deviation from the Midwestern dialect.

I am not an expert on all pocket dialects that exist in the region, but nobody here that I interact with pronounces it that way and my work puts me into contact with everything from inner city to country rural, both east and north of the city and into Kentucky and Indiana.

Usually when I hear Cincinnat-uh its followed by some old timer referring to a year like "it was 19 and a 52 when I......"

I did hear some stories about Chauncey (or Chance-ee?) while at OU that the pronunciation was altered during prohibition to help ID feds in the area looking to crack down on spirits made by moonlight. Anyone on here have the real story?

Ohio definitely has some interesting city/town/village names. I always enjoyed passing Coolville, Tunnel, Torch etc. when cruising Athens/Washington Counties in school.

We also have

Lima vs. Leema (as in Peru)
Galliapolis (I've heard that pronounced many ways)

It's always fun talking to a vendor from out of state trying to pronounce cities like Piqua.

I wonder how many states truly have a town for every letter of the alphabet? Not only do we have Xenia, but also Xavier University for a listing of Ohio attractions. Usually when I see one of my son's A-Z books for a place it's usually something lame like "X-Ray" or "X-tra fun"

Agree that pronunciation is not typically from Cincinnatians. I grew up outside Cincinnati and don't recall hearing it from locals. My OU Professor was not from Cincinnati. Not sure where he was from. I guess it's the same concept as pronouncing Missouri Missour-uh. Seems to be old fashioned. Don't remember the last time I heard it.

"Hop in the car to Ironton to take a shower." "Car," "Ironton," and "shower" all have the same "AHR" sound.

My wife (a third generation Irontonian, coincidentally) is a speech language pathologist, and says the technical term is "code switching"--the ability to jump from dialect to dialect depending on who you are trying to communicate with. She laughs because my hilljack accent and dialect comes out strong when I'm around my family or other hilljacks (or when I've had a couple or seven to drink).

Lancaster is one that caught me off guard when I first made it to Athens

I said it as "LAN-CASS-TER" when they say it quickly almost like "LINKISTIR"

I know that this story is not true. The pronunciation of Chauncey as Chance-ee way predates prohibition. But, an earlier story as to the reason for this pronunciation may also be false, I suspect. That story was that the pronunciation was adopted in the 1880s so that they could distinguish locals from "fureners" who were out to make crooked land deals and through such deals steal mineral rights from local land owners. This story, though older, seems equally suspicious. The pronunciation may, indeed, have helped to identify fureners, but it seems very unlikely that it was adopted for this reason. I suspect that this pronunciation can probably be traced back to the ethnic origin of those who first settled there. I don't know the exact composition of the early population, but I know that some of the settlers there were Welsh. I wonder how the Welsh pronounce "Chauncey"?

Pedro isn't a place. It's a state of mind.

It is kind of funny the way some people make fun of accents, specifically those in Appalachia, when in fact some of those pronunciations go way back in time to the King's English of 17th or 18th century England. Some Midwest accents are an amalgamation of various early settlers piecing together words from their own native tongues.

Perhaps this article on "Why Americans Smile A lot," is somewhat connected to this off topic discussion that has broke out on this thread. Some theorize that the reason Americans smile a lot is that our ancestors tried to understand each other and if they couldn't, they figured a smile might help any language difficulties.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/why-a... /