Talk:Launceston, Tasmania

"mispronounced"?

Launceston (/ˈlɒnsəstən/ ^ⓘ, often mispronounced /ˈlɔːnsəstən/ ^ⓘ) is a city ...

Is pronunciation really so militantly uniform in Australia that an alternative pronunciation is said to be mispronounced? My American ears can hear VERY little difference between the "correct" and "mispronounced" pronunciations given in this article—certainly not enough difference to label one of them as mispronounced. I'd think just the slight differences in pronunciation by people in the same family could allow for such a slight variation as this. Would it offend Australian sensibilities just to give them as two possible pronunciations, not one that's right and the other wrong? At what point does the mispronunciation of a word happen so often (as the article says this one does) that it can be considered an alternative pronunciation as opposed to a wrong pronunciation? —104.244.192.86 (talk) 01:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

The pronunciation of place names is quite another matter from the pronunciation of common nouns (and other words, of course). It is generally assumed that the "correct" pronunciation of a place name (in the common language of its inhabitants) is what the inhabitants call it. It is a standing joke/irritation among the people of Launceston (to be fair most of us, most of the time, probably don't care that much) that other Australians - even some other Tasmanians, mispronounce the city's name. Whatever an American might think, to a person from Launceston the difference in the way the first syllable sounds can produce the (momentary) illusion that it is another place altogether that the speaker is talking about. Just to compound the issue - an English person would elide the second syllable entirely, after the usual pronunciation of the name of the Cornish town. I can quite understand that this is a complete non-issue to an American reader, who is likely to pronounce our city's name in various creative and interesting ways. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

haha - we of the southern and western (Tasmanian) heritage tend to reduce it all to lonnie whichever way you want to read that.

For very strange misusages - try working out correct usage of western australians with the northern port of Derby, Western Australia JarrahTree 04:42, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Not going to get into the Derby/Darby one (lol). The first syllable of "lonny" (very commonly used here, too) is the same as the first syllable of the proper name of the city, which may prove a useful way of remembering for a speaker of a non-Northern Tasmanian dialect. -Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:59, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

In Queenstown pubs in the mid 1970s (sic) the place up the hill was Gormy and they were situated in Queeny... JarrahTree 06:07, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Difference sounds huge to an Australian SpaceInnovader (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2018 (UTC)