Rochesterians often pick up an accent common to other Great Lakes-area cities like Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. Former police chief and mayor Bob Duffy's Raachster accent is notorious. Linguists attribute this to a phenomenon called "the great northeastern vowel shift" where a soft "A" sound is nasalized into a hard "A" ("dollar" is pronounced "daller") and the soft "E" sound transmutes into a schwa or "uh" sound ("best" becomes "bust").
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Avon - (AH-vahn) town name, pronounced like 'have on' without that h, accent on the A.1
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Berkeley — BERK-lee street, near Park Avenue. The pronunciation here presumably agrees with the pronunciation of the California university town for which the street is presumably named. But this pronunciation is a corruption of the name of Bishop George Berkeley, whose surname was pronounced by the English as BAR-klay.
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Bob - (bAHb) as in Bob Matthews
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Castile - (CAST-isle) in Wyoming County.
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Charlotte - (shar-LOT) neighborhood name, with the accent on the 'lotte'.2
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Chili - (CHIY-liy) town name which (round here) does not rhyme with 'frilly' or 'silly'. rhymes with 'jai-alai', 'mai-tai', or 'fry-lie'.3 Strangely enough, Chili hosts an annual Chil-E Fest (pronounced like the spicy food), which doesn't involve chili the food in any manner. Please see Origins of the Name Chili
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Conesus - (kuh-NEE-shus) - nearby town and lake; for some reason, pronounced like the Buffalo liberal-arts college, Canisius.
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Dawn - (doughwn) The name of Don's wife
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Don - (dAHn) as in Don's Original
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Honeoye - (HUN-e-oy) town name with more of a confusing spelling that might suggest "HONE-oy" but is pronounced like "honey-oy."
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Hots - (HAHTS) - as in a white hot or a red hot, or as in the hots restaurants (eg. Fairport Hots, Bay Hots, etc.).
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Java - (JAY-va) town in Wyoming County, pronounced with a long "A" on the first syllable, unlike the Indonesian city or slang term for coffee.
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Kodak - (co-DACK) - with the 'A' sounding like the pronunciation of the 'A' in 'DAD'.
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Kreag - (kreg) - as in Kreag Road, running from Perinton to Bushnell's Basin
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Le Roy - (luh-ROY; LEE-roy) town southwest of Rochester frequently pronounced "luh-ROY" (bastardized French pronunciation)4 with emphasis on the second syllable, and sometimes as the man's name, "LEE-roy."
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Lilac - (LIE-lock)
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Lima - (LIY-mah) town name which is pronounced like the bean (or like -I'm a-), not the city in Peru.
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Monroe - (MUN-ro) county with the emphasis on the MUN, not the ro
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Nunda - (NUN-day) town in southern-central NY that is pronounced with a long "A" at the end.
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Ron - (rAHn) Not to be confused with Greece Chief of Police Rahn
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Riga - (RYE-guh) Once again, this town is pronounced with a long 'i'. Its namesake in the country of Latvia is properly pronounced (RE-guh).
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Rochester - The 'o' is often pronounced something more like 'ah', yielding: Rahchester. Sometimes blended into a two-syllable word: ROSH-ter (cf. Worcester/WOOS-ter)
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Rundel - (RUN-dul) Rundel Memorial Library Building name with the emphasis on the RUN. It's how Morton Rundel pronounced his name.
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Tom - (tAHm) as in local billionaire Tom Golisano (gAHlisahno)
See Also (or contribute to):
- 1This is actually the correct pronunciation of Avon, as in the River Avon in England. Think of Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was born. Avon (Ay-von), as in the cosmetics company from Croton-on-Hudson, NY is a mispronunciation of this.
- 2Older Rochester residents don't pronounce the 'r' - sha-LOT
- 3A couple of years ago, an out-of-towner criminal was exposed because he said he lived in the town of "Chilly" as he went door-to-door soliciting fraudulent donations (not entirely sure about the details, fill in if you've got em)
- 4The correct French pronunciation would actually sound something more like "luh-wrA"
