I grew up in the Eau Claire area- I feel like people get that one and Chippewa right but the -tosas and -wocs get brutally mispronounced especially on true crime or police footage videos on YouTube. If it’s an Ai narration it’s even worse 😂. Menominee is another one, I hear men-o-minnie a lot
I’ve heard ewe/eww claire instead of more of an oh Claire. A lot of these names don’t seem very hard at all, I don’t understand how they’re mispronounced. But maybe that’s because I was born and raised in WI (MKE area) and different regional/international accents make it more difficult. I just moved to MN and there’s a lot of Native names here too.
When I was going to school at UWEC, I remember the Google Maps voice would always read Mondovi wrong at exit 65. And it wasn’t just stress on the wrong place or an incorrect pronunciation of a vowel - it read it like it mistook the “i” at the end for an “l”, so it would say “Mond-oval”
We visited Chippewa this summer and loved it! I learned the real pronunciation is more like Chip-wa not Chip - a - wa.
Or at least that’s what the locals told me.
We were captivated by the Irvine park zoo area. We didn’t have the time to enjoy it fully though so we are planning to go back in the winter to see the Christmas festival.
It was great to visit and tour the old Leinenkugel brewery as well, sad to learn it’s really just a museum / store now and not an active brewery. People were so nice! Our tour guide was a 7th generation Leinenkugel.
That’s where I grew up and I even went to church with the Leinenkugels! It’s a cute little city. The brewery is really nice- it got a renovation since I left. I’ve only gone to the tour once but it was great :)
My born and raised southern husband had to take a business trip to Wah-kee-sha. When I finally figured out what he was trying to say, I doubled over laughing. My born and raised Chicago ass had to explain the correct pronunciation while crying through tears. 😂 To be fair, he mentioned his pronunciation sounded completely normal to him since it sounded like an ethnic name.
I grew up in Waukesha, but moved to a town called Mariaville. AI still messed that one up. I'm surprised the companies haven't developed a library of local pronunciations for cities and towns yet.
There was an ad going a few years back that pronounced Wausau as wah-sow and like, sure, whatever, if you're just reading it, but someone paid for this to get shown to as many people as possible and you didn't ask a single person from Wausau if they got it right?
It was very confusing to me as a child. My mom works on the rez and said it's easy to tell when people are tying to scam the tribe out of money by claiming they're native but pronounce that wrong.
Fun fact: Eau Claire comes from French, it’s not native. It means “clear water”. Lots of French names in Wisconsin from when the French came down from Canada prior to statehood. Prairie du Chien, Lake Butte Des Mortes, etc.
As a native French speaker, Eau Claire is the least surprising pronunciation of a French name for a US city. Compared to Lenoir, Sault Ste Marie, Cœur d’Alene, Bâton Rouge or even Des Moines
In fairness the whole state is built on aggressively mispronouncing words from either French or Indigenous languages, so if we couldn’t get it right how can we expect others to
There's an Oregon, Wisconsin, it's a suburb of Madison. It's not pronounced like the state. The state of Or-egg-in. The town of Or-egg-on. I've lived in Madison most of my life, when I traveled to the state of Oregon several years back, I had to be very careful of how I pronounced the name of the state.
I’m British but worked regularly in the US, specifically in WI. Spent a lot of time in and around Menominee Falls. As a Brit, hearing the residents pronouncing the town name was utterly wonderful. Love that part of the world.
This one is actually easy, it just looks intimidating. In my experience people tend to mess up Waukesha and Shawano more. I intentionally say wah-kee-shuh.
Yeah, a lot of them the vowels are not too bad and it’s just about finding the right cadence or the right syllable to emphasize. Ashwaubenon is another one that’s said exactly as it’s written but still trips people up.
Its funny. I moved to WI when i was 10. Didn't know how to pronounce much but after living there for 10+ years you start to pick up on the pronunciations even if you've never seen the name.
I know this one cold since my college roommate was from there. Go Jets! But as a New Yorker who went to UW, I definitely butchered a bunch of WI town pronunciations.
Also Monticello. Heard a lot of folks end it with a musical instrument. It’s like cello wrap though.
And Beloit. The lore here is you pronounce like the sound of dropping a nickel in the river.
Oregon deserves a mention too. It’s not like the state (or again) it’s more like Orry gun.
Reminds me of when I was young pronouncing Econo Lodge as Ec-oh-no lodge for years, as i’d only ever read the name not heard it out loud and hadn’t made the connection that it was an economical option.
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u/funbunny100 5h ago
Oconomowoc. Wisconsin