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I pronounce all of these lazy tongued words correctly. It would be Top-sale for me. It's Green-ville, not Green-vule. When my son in law came home from work one day he said that they had worked in Rally. I said I didn't know where Rally was. He said yeah you do, it's the capital of the state. Sir Walter Rally would be turning over in his grave. :-)
Actually the pronunciation Top-s'll is from England, it was set around 200 years ago, just like bos'n, cap'n, foc's'll (forecastle) and other nautical terms. This is a not regional North vs South or Tidewater vs. Mountain thing, these are universal pronunciations in the U.S., some linguists saying that the foreshortened or elided vowels were influenced by Irish and Scots-Irish sailors (most crew was lower-class and some were impressed for debt) who had a penchant for eliding certain vowels (Nash'n vs. Nashun for nation).
And as far as SW Raleigh goes, the following were variant spellings of his name during his lifetime (proving the point that regionalism was very alive in England then): Raleigh, Rawleigh, Rawley, Rawlee (-ey and -ee were not the same in those days), Rolley, Ralley, and others. Just like the kinds of variations in pronunciation seen today between regions of the U.S. - room and ruum, roof and ruuf, (standard English versus East Anglia/Dutch) or very versus "vurry" (the Philly way of pronouncing it, also Dutch-influenced).
And BTW when I was in Raleigh, I sadly noted that most accents were transplant I was half-expecting an accent as unique as the "Yat" part of New Orleans.
I pronounce all of these lazy tongued words correctly. It would be Top-sale for me. It's Green-ville, not Green-vule. When my son in law came home from work one day he said that they had worked in Rally. I said I didn't know where Rally was. He said yeah you do, it's the capital of the state. Sir Walter Rally would be turning over in his grave. :-)
Sorry, but the "correct" way to pronounce a geographic name is how the natives do, not as it's spelled. "Top-SAIL" is just as wrong as "Rally".
Do you say Ar-KANSAS? Do you say "MARY Land"?
I confess that this means I need to learn to say "Nuh-VAD-a" instead of "Nuh-VAH-da", but I'm aware that that's my quirk, not theirs.
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And BTW when I was in Raleigh, I sadly noted that most accents were transplant I was half-expecting an accent as unique as the "Yat" part of New Orleans.
There are plenty of Southerners/NC natives in Raleigh, but the "Raligh accent" is not all that "striking". It's a "soft" Southern accent, not like the "mountain" sound that is very twangy, nor like the coastal (r-less) accent that's buttery. Just a middle-of-the-road Southern, somewhat like "Julia Sugarbaker" on "Designing Women" for lack of a more recent well-known character.
It's amazing how the born and bred indengenious personnel from the coastal communities pronounce words like "tourist" and "developer". It doesn't sound anything like how it's spelled!
I'm glad this thread was started because I was saying "top-sale."
OK, now how about Kure Beach? I used to say "cure" (don't shoot me)...then I heard people say "curry"...then someone told me that it's not even "curry," it's more like "cure-y" (or, Curie as in Marie)
LOL, it's the same all over: many towns in PA and VA for instance are pronounced differently than you would think from the spelling: i.e. Lebanon, PA is pronounced LEB-nun, Staunton, VA is pronounced: STAN-ton.
I have to say though as some princess person posted, I have a hard time not saying a word the way it's spelled
I had been checking into a rental at what I thought what TOP-SAIL, now I know better. I also found out when staying in Corolla it's not pronounced like the car.........
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I was half-expecting an accent as unique as the "Yat" part of New Orleans.
