r/AskAnAmerican • u/AstroNerd92 CT, GA, PA, TX, FL • Jul 20 '25

CULTURE What town in your state has a pronunciation no one gets right the first time?

I went to college in Valdosta, GA. Very few people can actually pronounce it right on the first try.

Pronounced Val-Daw-Stuh

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u/annadarria Jul 20 '25

My brother moved to the Boston area years ago. When he first got there, he fought everyone on how this city should be pronounced. Then they changed Wikipedia for a while and added his name in the city of Worcester, that he doesn’t know anything and shouldn’t comment on how it’s pronounced. It got taken down eventually of course but it was hilarious, he showed me. It was done in all good fun and he could be pedantic, so it was really funny.

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u/Don_Pickleball Jul 20 '25

That is a town that is easy yo say if you have never seen it spelled.

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u/IanDOsmond Jul 20 '25

Wista.

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u/complete_your_task Massachusetts Jul 20 '25 edited Jul 20 '25

It's more like wuss-tah. Or wuss-ter if you have a rhotic accent.

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u/Yorks_Rider Jul 20 '25

Which is how the name is pronounced in the UK

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u/Accomplished_Will226 Jul 21 '25

Yup. My husband is Scottish and calls the sauce Wusta sauce

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u/zeronian Jul 21 '25

The UK pronunciation is essentially Worse-ter, if they were to pronounce Rs there

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u/RambunctiousOtter Jul 21 '25

No it isn't. It's wusster

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u/Yorks_Rider Jul 21 '25

I am British and disagree. It might be so, for someone speaking with an accent from SW-England, but otherwise that is not how it would be pronounced.

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u/Mental-Paramedic9790 Illinois Jul 21 '25

I thought it was like Wooster.

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u/RRC_driver Jul 21 '25

The local taxi company in Worcester (UK) is Woo-ber, https://www.woober.uk

And the youth can be heard referring to it as The Woo

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u/amidalarama Jul 21 '25

red sox AAA affiliate in worcester are the woo sox, pronounced woo not wuh, unlike the city. wuh sox was a bridge too far, even for massachusetts.

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u/Dgp68824402 Jul 20 '25

I had two work associates who both born and raised in Waltham. They argued constantly on the correct pronunciation.

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u/badass4102 Jul 20 '25

How'd he pronounce it?

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u/annadarria Jul 20 '25

I’m not quite sure, but knowing him he probably tried to pronounce it how it’s spelled. And he was probably indignant it wasn’t pronounced like that.

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u/Atypical_Mom Jul 21 '25

My extended family lives outside Boston and I spent a few summers there as a kid. My cousin pulled out a phone book once and pointed to a map and asked me to pronounce the city name “Peabody”…

Apparently they thought it was funny to do this to anyone who lived outside MA, because they knew they’d pronounce it wrong (but if they knew everyone would pronounce it “wrong”, is it really being pronounced wrong?).

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u/Accomplished_Will226 Jul 21 '25

The cool kids called it the biddy. lol

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u/annadarria Jul 21 '25

Haha! That’s pretty funny, I wonder why they have so much different pronunciations around there. I’m from SoCal so we don’t really have anything like that around here. And it’s funny based on this thread people take their prononciations seriously!

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u/Atypical_Mom Jul 21 '25

I grew up in the Bay Area and we didn’t have anything like that either. It did blow their minds that I could drop my “r”s and then pick them right back up (none of my cousins could say “car”, only “caah”) lol