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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Towns here have familiar names with unfamiliar pronunciations. I’m learning: Berlin. BER-lin. Milan. MY-lin East Palestine. East Pal-ass-TEEN. Lima. LIE-ma Solon. SO-lun. Medina. Me-DYN-a. (Funky cold Me-DYN-a?) And I thought the Spanish names in CA were difficult!
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| Foregoing Practicing to Post Minor Deity  |
I read a book by Helen Hooven Santmyer called “Ohio Town.” It was about her life in Xenia, Ohio, which I hear hardly exists anymore, as a tornado flattened it. I remember there was some beautiful prose in there.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I read that book too! Found it just after we decided to move and I thought it was charming.
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Minor Deity |
Xenia is alive and well. I lived through that tornado as it went through my town first. We all left the pool hall and were out on the street to see it. Xenia was hit hard. Since I went through it often, I saw the devastation the next day or so. Whole subdivisions with nothing left standing. Big old houses on Detroit Street with the walls and roof ripped off like a doll house, the beds in the rooms still made neatly.
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| Minor Deity |
But Steve, wait until you encounter Mariemont, America's first planned community. It's a lovely area, like an English village. But how to pronounce it.... is it MAREE-mont or MARYmont. The debate rages.
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Minor Deity |
The name suggests some sort of French lineage (so I’d pronounce it as if it’s French), yet it’s “like an English village.” A bit of an identity crisis there.  EDIT: ok, found a picture on the Internet showing a plaque that says the village founder’s name was “Mary M. Emery,” and the town is supposedly named after her. Why the town is named “Mariemont” instead of “Marymont” is beyond me.
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| Minor Deity |
Probably because it would sound more Catholic.
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Beatification Candidate |
I grew up near the Ohio town of Cadiz - pronounced CAD-is. That tendency toward pronunciation of place names different from their European antecedents is not confined to Ohio. Here in the same county I live in is a town named Versailles - verSALES. Lots of other examples on the landscape. Big Al
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| Minor Deity |
We have one in Ohio too, pronounced the same way.
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