And yet we don’t have a Shitterton
Hebron, Lebanon, and Bozrah CT have entered the chat.
Jamaica, VT has entered the chat
Consequently people from New England are the only ones who know how half the current English place names are pronounced.
“Truth and Consequences, NM”
“Dinosaur, CO”
“City of Industry, CA”
“Why Not?, NC”
Springfield, yes
Meanwhile, Alexander the Great: You’ll be me lol
There’s a lot of places in America that are named after native American tribes. I guess it’s the least our predecessors could do considering how badly they fucked over and slaughtered the natives.
Meanwhile in the UK they have Bath and Bedford
Not to mention my whole country is named after a place there. New Zealand
Zealand being in the Netherlands, though. The way you replied made it sound UK.
In the west coast we typically just used the name of the native tribe we killed in order to take the land.
Or the Spanish name from when the Spanish took the land a couple hundred years before.
In Oklahoma we just use the name of whatever tribe was forcibly relocated there. Although I know of one town that was named after a misspelling of an indian chief’s name. The Apollo 14 CSM pilot lived there.
I wouldn’t know anything about that here in siʔaɬ.
That’s OK though /j
Yes, I visited Themdamninjuns last time I went through Illinois.
for the purposes of my joke, many people wouldn’t have known - or cared to know - the names of the local tribes
I’ve never been through Illinois
If you are making multiple asides, the standard approach is to use square brackets within the first parentheses, not double parentheses.
e.g.
The dildo was menacing and enormous (likely the biggest I have ever used [nearly 4 feet]).
footnotes1.
1gotta use2
2go3tcha
3 better footnotes
Thank you. I think I have it now.
Nah I prefer feeling like I’m reading a 90’s chain email.
I had not heard of this before. Usually those are used when adding text to a quote for clarification. Is this mainly a British English thing?
It’s professional writing. It’s like when people complain how titles have capital letters in them, is just a form of writing.
and then we say a prayer thanking the tribe every sunday at church, don’t forget that
They do it before everything from sports to classical music where I am.
do they explicitly thank the tribe in the prayer?
i know they’re trying, but it’s kind of ridiculous.
It’s not actually a prayer, just an acknowledgement. But yes.
i think i’m kind of superimposing the prayers and acknowledgements because (1) the last one i was at was at a church and it was kind of both, (2) i’m a church musician and when all you’ve got is a hammer, and (3) like, statesia. prayers. you know.
one of my grandfathers was one of the kids stolen from his tribe (fuck if we know which one) by the mormons as part of their Indian Placement Program (theologically they wanted to turn the natives white. don’t get me started). so like, i don’t want to sear all white people with the same brand, but like, sometimes the acknowledgements feel like a bandaid. okay most of the time.
all i know is it fucked up my grandfather something terrible
“Americans” as in white Europeans?
Other than the earliest settlements, most cities in the US were named by people born in North America.
It would be amazing if they had arrived to the Americas and ask some natives about how they call a place and they said “this? This is New Amsterdam. We don’t know what’s Amsterdam but this is a newer version of it”
My ancestors had great names for places. Then the white invaders killed most of us and named our land after their home.
I think this meme would be better suggested to say white European immigrants to America.
A lot of states are named after the natives they genocided
Exactly - they weren’t “Americans” yet.
Let’s name our town “New [someplace we miss back home].”
Hey, give them some credit, they have some diversity - there’s place in europe, new place in europe, mispronounced place in europe, british ruler, catholic saint in spanish, american president, explorer related to america, and of course native american place/tribe, and random native american word
The Spanish names barely count because those were originally Mexican and had been named before USA was born.
I think you’re just describing how the etymology of most named places works.
In my country we name places after the surrounding area/environment. If it’s an area with a big hill it will probably have a name to reflect that.
I love visiting other areas “Old Barn Rd”, and “Swamp Rd”
These days you can’t even tell the name comes from the area. They use old words to describe it. An area with a hill could be called a “Something-bjer”. Bjer means hill and is close to the modern word Berg but if you don’t know about it then you don’t think about it.
Sure, we could have old barn road. But I am not talking about roads. More like City names, local village names, local area names and such.
mispronounced place in europe
Americans can’t pronounce Illinois
Illin-wah
N’wah!
Kansas
Arkansas
Kansas
Arkansas
Kansas and pirate Kansas
There’s a town in Illinois called Sauget with an ongoing debate over how to pronounce it. None of the dozens of pronunciations are what you’d think.
I vote they settle on changing the name to sausage.
First read this as “naming new borns” and I was thinking of names like Paris or London, and all of the comments kind of made sense but were still slightly off. It was a fun, confusing time for me, until I scrolled up and re-read OP. Thanks for listening to my story.
And at some places they even reassign them new genders: The coat of arms of Berne Switzerland has a bear with a red penis. The US town: New Berne has a bear without a penis as a coat of arms. This means during the sea transport, Berne’s bear outed themselves as Transgender and changed their sex to a lady-bear. (At least in my head cannon)
Almost certainly typical American Puritanism.
Wow, history is fascinating!
You can still see it, it just became bigger and black and moved a bit backwards
Behold the BBBBBC (Berne’s Bear’s Big Black Backward Cock)
But you forgot, we also have to mispronounce it then get mad if you don’t mispronounce it the right way.
-someone that was born in New berlin, not “new berLIN”, But “new BURlin”.
How about naming the town after a city in Austria, but still the Roman way? Not just once, not just twice, but
(EDIT: I’m having déja vu after the last time had I brought up the several dozen Springfields)
Strong levi-o-sa energy.
100% it’s all in the emphasis. It’s subtle, but just different enough that you can tell if someone is from the area based on their pronunciation.
For a better example: Versailles, Kentucky. Guess how that one is pronounced.
Oh God,I had an ex from Georgia that would hit me with these. Let’s go with “verse-ay-lees”.
I will go with ver-sales
Yea apperantly Worcester is pronounced “wis-tah”
If you think of Worcestershire sauce it make sense.
More evidence that Egypt is European.
It was Europeans who named those places.
Yeah, people from that city or place moved there and named their new home after their old home. There’s a very Dutch area of Michigan with many immigrants from the Netherlands still there. Want to know a couple town names? Holland and Zeeland.
Can’t forget Noordeloos, Vriesland, Overisel, Drenthe, and Borculo. Been to Borculo a few times. Lotsa folks with Dutch/Frisian/Low German surnames in the area, including the (in)famously wealthy Van Andel and De Vos families of Grand Rapids.
Supposedly, the phrase “if you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much” used to be common here, but I’ve never heard it used unironically. Likely died off with time.
Well, Americans citizens were all immigrants, most were European
Americans citizens were all immigrants,
Don’t let ICE read that!
