It's a rainy moring; it's going to be a rainy day. Did a double header college soccer games last evening. Crashingly tired this morning, endorphins are spent. Soggy mornings the imagination drifts to other things. Like music. Maybe a prefered song from Rodney Crowell. Something about Stars on the Water.

It's a goodly song, but Nashville need to learn how to pronounce bayou..

I should know how to pronounce it, after all, it's a Choctaw word. Hank Sr. din't knowed how to pronounce it either.

So is not bye-yo? Kinda like Nuke-yu-lare. Some things just stick in your head and it's gonner. Actually, the mispronunciations classically loved by visitors and newly moved residents... la-FAY-ette for what is traditionally pronounced Layfette in the French manner everywhere else. Or Demonbruen. Looks like Demon-bruin right? Try Duh-mum-bree-on. HUH?! That's ok, hubby used to have friends in Triana. Try saying it tree-anna and you'll be laughed off the face of Alabama, cause everyone whose from there knows it's TRI-anna.

Well there's Triana, Triana Blvd, and Wall-Triana. All amongst the same area.

Iffin bayou were pronounced properly by you, you would say by you.

Whew! It's a relief to know I've been saying by-yew correctly. Now, if someone would give the definitive pronounciation for Carribean.

I didn't even know anyone pronounced bayou any other way but with a short a. I kept playing it through my mind how else it could be said. I guess I figure the correct way to pronounce any particular thing is how the natives of that place/feature do. What shot immediately to mind was the city of Louisville, Kentucky. I used to live and work there, or right outside of it. Of course only the really newbie would ever articulate the "S". Most people know better than that unless they are from out of the country. But, if you listen to a native talk about his/her city it comes out something like Loo-uh-vul.

I love to hear newscasters grasping to get our local pronunciations on Indian names like Scioto. It's not pronounced Sky-oh-toe, but sigh-Oh-tah here. Rio Grande college isn't pronounced like in the Spanish, but they say Rye-oh-grand. Norwich is pronounced like Nor-wick. My English SIL, I've got him almost paranoid, but he says we can't help it if we don't know how to pronounce things. LOL. Then again they murder French names. We were traveling in England once, and passed a Village named Beauchamps. I asks him how he would pronounce it, and he says "Beecham". argh. LOL

Well, a certain someone here lives in a town called Bayou LeBatre.

By you le bat tree.

See, it's really very easy....

French names are murdered almost everywhere in America. Here in Tyler we've got a street called Bois d'Arc pronounced Bow Dark. And in St. Louis the examples were almost too many to count. My favorites were Gratiot pronounced Gratchit znd Gravois pronounced Gravoy. And Veresailles, Indiana is pronounced Ver-sales by the natives.

We have a Gratiot near us as well. The natives at do a little better than outsiders wrapping their tongues around it pronouncing it Gray-shot instead of gratt-ee-ought.

"son of a gun we'll have big fun on the bayou" - I thought that engraved the correct way to pronounce "bayou" on brains of everyone in the USA.