Complex Numbers

It's "Desert" Not "Dessert"

I pronounce it "collection of endorrheic basins," but apparently, that's wrong.

    Why Do Nevadans Pronounce Their State’s Name So Strangely?  
How you say it certainly says something about who you are.

Look, it's an occupational hazard when you make a career out of hydrology to see the world in terms of drainage areas.

Seriously, though, I, too, pronounced Nevada in the non-Nevadan way until I spent some time as a guest of someone who lives there. Then, I learned the One True Pronunciation, ensuring that never again would I be caught by that particular shibboleth.

How exactly is the name of this state pronounced? Nevadans say “neh-VAD-uh.” Non-Nevadans typically say “neh-VAH-duh.”

To get it out of the way, there isn’t really a “correct” or “incorrect” way to pronounce Nevada in any objective sense; both “neh-VAD-uh” and “neh-VAH-duh” are perfectly understandable to all English speakers, which is really the only thing that matters.

Yeah, not really. Watch what happens if you mispronounce quinoa, for example.

It is not unusual for the residents of a state to have their own pronunciation of their state’s name; regional accents and dialects can affect all kinds of words.

Which, I suppose, is how we get Mississippi when the people who live in that state call it Misipi. And don't get me started on Ar-Kansas.

Even worse, few countries pronounce their names the same way that foreigners do. I'm sure that the way we say "France" here in the US grates on the very last nerve of the French.

Proponents of “neh-VAH-duh” will often say, look, nevada is a Spanish word (meaning “snowy” or “snow-capped,” and the state’s name is probably derived from the Sierra Nevada mountain range, part of which lies within its borders.

And the area, like most of California, was once claimed by Spain and Mexico, which ex-Spains all the Spanish names in the area. Want to piss off some Southern Californians? Pronounce La Jolla like you're English, not Spanish.

The problem is that Spanish, being a much more sensible language than English, has five vowels, and five vowels only. (Well, if we’re not counting dipthongs. Or tripthongs. All languages are complicated but stay with me here.)

I think there are more problems here than that.

There are a couple of possible explanations for this phenomenon. One is that Nevada, being a fairly new and historically largely unpopulated state, traditionally did not have much to differentiate it. If you’re proud to be a Nevadan, what could you do to present that to the rest of the world? Until the creation of the Vegas Golden Knights NHL hockey team in 2017, the state had no major professional sports team, which is often a way to signify geographical pride.

You know who else doesn't have a major professional sports team? Virginia. And I don't hear too much crap about pronouncing my state wrong, except for the hillbillies out west who insist on Virginny.

In any case, the article (from AO) is like candy to me because it involves history, linguistics, sociology, and philosophy. So there's no hard science; nothing's perfect. In other words, everyone can learn something there, if only the "correct" pronunciation of Nevada.