If you have been to enough places and talked to the locals in their native surroundings, you’ve probably noticed that many places have their own pronunciations or even accents or dialects. It might be something as simple as a city in Ohio being pronounced as Ver-SALES instead of Ver-SIGH, or it might be local colloquialisms that amount to its own dialect.

EDIT Here’s another example: I don’t know that it is common any more, but some natives of the state of Missouri pronounce the name as Missour-AH, not Missour-EEE.

I thought it would be interesting to note the local WV pronunciations and slang. For example, Buddy is the Appalachian equivalent of California’s “dude”. I’ve been called it several times in WV or when on the phone with a Mountaineer, but I can’t recall it ever having been heard it nearly as often before.

• Mountaineer – a WV native/resident.
• Kanawha – this is both the name of the county my house is in, and the name of a couple rivers. It is pronounced Keh-NAW (my source is local news).
• Appalachia – Obviously this refers to the mountain range and the region, but in WV it is pronounced differently from what I would expect. I thought it was AppaLAYchia, but I’ve heard locals say AppaLAchia (as in lad, not lay).
• “with sauce” – If you find a WV restaurant offering this as an option for hot dogs, it usually means adding chili to the hot dog.
• Ramp – This is the WV name for a type of wild onion/leek that are native to much of the eastern US.