[Magdalen] Local Pronunciation.

[ME Michaud]

The Kennebec is a river and also its valley. Also, many places named by the
people who lived here before English speakers just stuck. New England is
full of place names of the Abenaki, etc. We always joke: Piscataqua (the
river of my childhood) means the place uncle Joe got drunk and tumbled off
the river bank with a big splash.

Piscataqua is pronounced piss-CATTA-kor (and this is how we recognize the
tourists).

A woman I know moved to Portsmouth. Everybody kept telling her the best
supermarket was the Pic'N Pay. She looked for it for months., only to learn
it was now the Hannafords (Hannaford having bought the Pic'N Pay from the
Amergian family back in the 1970s). It's been a Hannaford for forty years,
but everybody still calls it the Pic'N Pay.

Amherst, Mass. was always pronounced AMM-hurst by the students at UMass,
but Am'urst by the students at Amherst College.

I think these things trace arcs of territoriality, membership, belonging.
-M

On Monday, February 15, 2016, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com> wrote:
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> What does all this mean? I'm still pondering. More coffee.
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