WHAT YOU SAY
Willie Drye, author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, offers this challenge:
Take an informal survey among the people who live there about whether they pronounce it "New Orleans" or "NAW-lins.
Willie, assume that the mantle has been accepted.
I had dinner tonight and I asked my server Carlea if people in New Orleans pronounce it that way, or if people who are not from New Orleans pronounce it that way because they think it makes them sound cool, like they really
know the town.
"Nah, everybody says, 'New Orleans,'' she said. "Only outsiders say, 'NAWlins.''
There you have it, Willie: 100 percent proof that your hypothesis was correct.
Posted by Jeff at September 30, 2004 02:42 AM
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