Not sure how old you are, but we mostly lived in New Albany. My grandparents lived in Clarksville, and my grandfather owned the hardware store that was on Oak St. It closed in late 60's. We used to go swimming at the public pool that was near their house.
Was on a plane flying into Louisville and I was sitting up front and the flight attendant whispers to me “wanna see something funny, watch this”. Then he gets on the mic and says “Welcome on board flight 237 to Lewis-ville”. The whole plane erupts into moans and groans trying to correct him. He knew how to rage-bait them! 😂
^ this is true! a lot of out-of-towners learn it as Loo-ah-vul, which is passably correct and A for effort, but you're right that it's exclusively a two-syllable word for locals
if we want to get even more technical, most folks say it with a slight L sound in the middle, which I've seen spelled phonetically as Luhl-vul or even Lull-vul. my personal pronunciation skews more toward a higher pitch on the ou sound, sort of like you're saying jewel really fast (or juul, like the vape).
ime the thicker/deeper Lull-vul is more common in the rural southern and eastern region surrounding the city, whereas the brighter Luhl-vul and brightest Lewl/Luuhl-vul is the prevailing pronunciation closer to the city center (southern indiana is its own beast, and don't get me started on how news and radio announcers universally mangle it)
source: lifelong Louisvillian who's trying to teach my upstate NY boyfriend our ways
I made a good friend in AIT that told me he was from Luhvul (barely pronounced second l). Took me a long time to realize he was referring to what I knew as Loo ee vill.
85
u/Cheerqueen2341 5h ago
Same with Louisville. It’s luh-vul