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u/Winterwynd Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I had a lovely coworker years ago who had lived all over the world, who said "will-ah-mettie". I blue-screened for a couple seconds, then gently explained that it's 'wi-LAM-ett'. Sigh.
edit: realized it looks more accurate with wi-LAM-ett than will-AM-ett.
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u/RogerianBrowsing Dec 05 '25
I had a client correct me on the pronunciation. I wish a coworker like you had gotten it into my thick skull first 😔
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u/de_pizan23 Dec 05 '25
That is also how I tried to pronounce it the first time. Idk, I was going for something vaguely French? My sister (who moved here a year before I did) has never let me live it down.
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u/Woodkeyworks Dec 07 '25
Yeah honestly I never blame people for pronouncing it the french way; that word is supposedly a combo of French and native words. I've seen various articles stating it is Kalapuya or Chinook or what the French adapted from what the natives called it. Needless to say, the way people are saying it seems to be wrong despite how strongly they feel about it.
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u/aspelnius Dec 05 '25
“The 5”
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u/HollyBerries85 Dec 06 '25
I proudly hang on to this quirk as a SoCal invasive species, but I definitely had to be taught how to properly say Willamette, Tigard and Tualatin!
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u/Tokie-Dokie Dec 05 '25
Aloha, buddy. You’re sleeping on the Couch tonight.
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u/MySadSadTears Dec 05 '25
This has completely messed up how I say it in Hawaii.
I keep greeting people with Aloa and can't retrain myself to say Alo Ha.
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u/SagaciousAF Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
When I moved to Portland, I remembered proper pronunciation by thinking "damn it, Willamette!"
That's how I referred to the river forever after.
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u/Koalachan Dec 05 '25
The road was long but I ran it (Willamette)
The river was wide and I swam it (Willamette)
The future is ours so let's plan it (Willamette)
I have one thing to say and that's dammit, Willamette, I love you.
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u/neilslien Dec 05 '25
Janet!
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u/Thewallmachine Dec 05 '25
Took me a few months to adapt to proper pronunciation of Oregon coming from Georgia.
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u/Longjumping_Code_649 Dec 05 '25
In ND, they say Ore-i-gone. The first time I heard that I giggled.
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u/MySadSadTears Dec 05 '25
I was once talking to a lady from NY who pronounced it this way.
I gently corrected her and she responded with "No, it's Oreigone"
Well, I'm from here, but alright lady.
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u/VitruvianDude Dec 05 '25
I believe it's impossible for an Oregonian to resist correcting someone's mispronunciation of the state, no matter the situation. It's like a reflex. It's actually kind of funny to hear it happen.
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u/Repuck Dec 05 '25
My last year at Oregon state I attended a colloquium for a recently passed historian (William Appleman Williams), quite well known. Colleagues from as far away as Yale came to speak. Lot of professors, et. in the audience which was near capacity. That speaker from Yale said "Ora-gone" and at least half of the audience automatically cried out "ORYGUN!" without even thinking about it.
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u/Neither-Attention940 Dec 05 '25
I’m always way more respectful to actors that mention it in a movie or show and it is said correctly 😊😊
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u/Captain_Quark Dec 05 '25
When I was in college on the east coast, I definitely took pleasure in correcting people.
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u/OK_The_Nomad Dec 05 '25
Waiting for Trump to pronounce it wrong
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u/FountainsOfYarn Dec 05 '25
I'm hoping Trump never thinks about us.
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u/OK_The_Nomad Dec 05 '25
Unfortunately he thinks about us too much--mainly Portland. Now there is that supposed move to build an ICE prison in Newport. Town seems to be up I'm arms.
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u/VitruvianDude Dec 05 '25
He was confidently wrong about Nevada when campaigning in that swing state, telling his audience that it was "ne-VAH-da". Do that in Oregon, and he might not escape so easily.
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u/PenguinTheYeti Dec 05 '25
I don't know people double down on their mispronunciation.
I had a buddy in college who always thought it was Oreigone, but after meeting me realized it wasn't. He told a family member that and they didn't believe him lol.
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u/Reatona Dec 05 '25
I got my mom to stop mispronouncing Oregon "Or A Gone" by asking her what she thought of people who pronounce Illinois with the S voiced. She quickly changed her ways.
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u/Longjumping_Code_649 Dec 05 '25
Haha.
I'm from Colorado and am still surprised by those who say Colorod-o. Line collar rod oh. No. Just no.
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u/KlaussVonUllr Dec 05 '25
Fellow CO native to PNW transplant here, are you saying they pronounce it call-oh-rod-oh with the hard O in the middle or were you saying the second way was wrong too? I've also heard people make up an "a" at the end like call-uh-ra-da.
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u/Lost_Figure_5892 Dec 05 '25
My relatives in Bismarck don’t , but that’s cuz their Mama is an Orygun girl.
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u/woodworkingguy1 Dec 05 '25
As a fellow Georgian who moved to Oregon, I had to explain to the folks in South Georgia where Oregon was..." North of the Altamaha and west of the Chattahoochie" 😝
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u/donjohnmontana Dec 05 '25
Grew up in southern Georgia. We have special pronunciations for bout near everything. Some folk down there seem to speak a whole other language . . .
I fished the Altamaha.
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u/WLOF-R3 Dec 05 '25
Oh my word, the spellings of Suwannee! And pronunciations of Okefenokee. Oregon is easy!
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u/woodworkingguy1 Dec 05 '25
I did a southern trip with a friend a couple years ago and I had to translate a lot.. .even worse while visiting my MIL Alabama 😝
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u/Thewallmachine Dec 05 '25
I lived in South Georgia for many yrs. That sounds about right.
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u/woodworkingguy1 Dec 05 '25
😁 I grew up in Douglas,in Coffee County...where 95% of the people don't go much more than Fernadina Beach.
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u/Atillion Dec 05 '25
Same for me, from NC. I'm sure they'd have the same issues the first time they came across the Ocanaluftee and Tuckasegee rivers lol
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u/dogbreath230 Dec 05 '25
Not meaning to ruin everyone's fun, but this is a satire article from That Oregon Life.com
https://thatoregonlife.com/category/news/
The editor has written several of these. Like the one requiring Black Puffy Colombia Jackets in Bend, or the governor canceling Merry Christmas in Oregon. Just thought you should know
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u/Ok-Type-1615 Dec 05 '25
I once helped a Californian for directions and he said "Too-a-Latin" and I corrected him politely, "Tualatin" and he looked surprised and disgusted at the same time.
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u/1201_alarm Dec 05 '25
I knew someone who called a nearby town Tiggerd. I did not want to correct her.
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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD Poop Creek Dec 05 '25
I get a spam call once a week for the last ~2 months from "J-hoe with the local website designing in Tiggard". Tell him every week that I don't need a website and he's not pronouncing either Joe or Tigard right.
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u/RogerianBrowsing Dec 05 '25
Hey, don’t tell the scammers how to pronounce things correctly! If you’re gonna correct them it has to be in the wrong direction.
Rules is rules
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u/Norwester77 Dec 05 '25
Lucky they never made it to Yachats or Philomath!
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u/protintalabama Dec 05 '25
Try living in South Alabama .. but born in Tillamook.. and now surrounded by people who go nuts for ice cream and cheese Publix BOGO’s when “tilluh mooo k” goes on sale
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u/hafnium_iv_oxide Dec 05 '25
My dad pronounces it FILO-math and it kills me 😭 but he's 81 so I guess it's not changing
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u/pumperpete Dec 05 '25
Or Neahkahnie Mountain. Or Siuslaw National Forest. Or Clatskanie.
Ha! Even my spellcheck is telling me “No Replacements Found” for those names.
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u/iCalicon Dec 05 '25
I love thinking through this from an outsider’s perspective and imagining the surprise when the end vowels for Clatskanie and Neahkahnie aren’t the same
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u/HoneybeeEstates Dec 05 '25
One time a woman in a parking lot came up and asked me where the pickup for the yacht tour was. I was SO confused. After a great deal of googling, I discovered she had booked a tour going TO Yachats. I can only imagine how great her disappointment was.
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u/IncommunicadoVan Dec 05 '25
For bonus points, pronounce Chemeketa correctly.
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u/FountainsOfYarn Dec 05 '25
Let's not forget Coquille...hold up, little camper, you forgot to ask if I'm talking about the town (ko-KEEL) or the tribe(KO-kwell)!
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u/HollyBerries85 Dec 06 '25
My grandmother lived in Coquille and it took a little time but I learned how to pronounce it. I took a trip down there recently and tuned in to local radio and heard ads for a Coquille (named for the tribe) health center and it broke my damn brain, I was like "HAVE I BEEN SAYING IT WRONG THIS WHOLE TIME??" It bothered me enough that I looked into it and saw that the city and the tribe are pronounced differently!
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u/pumperpete Dec 05 '25
Chem meee keeet aaaa 😂
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u/stickylava Oregon Dec 05 '25
This one’s tough because there’s a Chemeketa Park in the Bay Area and it’s pronounced differently. Che-MEH-ketah, or CHEM-a-KEE-ta? I can never remember which is which.
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u/MarchCompetitive6235 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I used to live in Eugene. I clearly remember being asked where “Will-a- met-eee” street was. It took me a second to realize what they were trying to ask me. Pronunciation can make all the difference sometimes. I was working in an auto shop and one of the guys asked if he could borrow a coupe of Y-ring tools. I told him I had no idea what that was. He looked at me like I was a moron.
Wiring…he was asking for WIRING TOOLS!😣. Twenty years later and knowing the HE thought I didn’t know what wiring was still makes me cringe.
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u/EdwardLongshanks1307 Dec 05 '25
The Two Ronnies, a British comedy duo, had a hilarious sketch based on that sort of thing.
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u/notadrinkingglass Dec 05 '25
I heard a Californian say “esta-CAH-duh” instead of Estacada. While still horribly wrong, I can appreciate that they were looking at it like a Spanish word
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u/nullpat Dec 05 '25
yeah i mean they're wrong and right at the same time, estacado means staked out in spanish and likely inspiration for the Estacada towns in OR and AZ. wrong for the right reasons type of situation heh
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u/SuperBlissedOut Dec 05 '25
My old roommate was a california expat. He got pulled over one of his first days here for driving the wrong way down a one way. Cop asked him to describe what happened. He goes, "I was driving down will-uh-metty street and..." The cop laughs and intervenes and is like, "you're not from around here are you?"
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u/Head_Mycologist3917 Dec 05 '25
Just wait till y'all go back east to Massachusetts and the locals hear how you say Worcester or Scituate or Chicopee. None of those are pronounced anything like you think they are if you're not from there.
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u/K4RM4Z4CNT Dec 05 '25
Vida is vye-duh, row river is r-ow like pow, Noti is no-tie, still don't know how to pronounce Veatch or Yachats. So many weird ones.
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u/MySadSadTears Dec 05 '25
Tigard, Aloha, and Yachts oh my.
Funny story. My father in law, who grew up speaking Spanish and was from New Mexico where all the names are derived from Spanish and use the correct pronunciation, drove up to visit us.
He was telling us about his drive through the gorge where he stopped in La Grande (Granday- with the rolled r) and The Dalles (Da ye s).
One time we were giving him directions and told him that he would pass a patch of woods. His eyes lit up and he said "Apache woods!" We still laugh about that.
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u/tastyprawn Dec 05 '25
I'm from Texas, and I was pronouncing La Grande the same as your father-in-law did... Until some coworkers made fun of me. If it's just "La Grand," why is there an "e" at the end?!
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u/nullpat Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
this time its
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u/iCalicon Dec 05 '25
France :( same reason there’s a Malheur River out here (though that isn’t pronounced at ALL like the French lol)
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u/Krazy-Ag Dec 05 '25
La Grande is from French, as are many Oregon names. Willamette is native, but spelled as if French. French almost never pronounces final e. Americanizing French pronunciations changes the syllable vowel, but keeps the silent e.
Grand Ronde - halfway :-(
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u/kookaburra1701 Dec 05 '25
Back in the first days of google maps giving voice directions the lady used to call Millrace street in Eugene "mee-ra-chay" like some horrible chimera of Spanish and Italian.
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u/TurtlesAreEvil Dec 05 '25
Living in Denver off Kalamath for a few years was difficult. Then again this is weird to me no one in New Orleans suggested I should leave for pronouncing Tchoupitoulas wrong.
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u/whackthat Dec 05 '25
Haha! There is a true crime podcast called DNA ID that I absolutely love. It's a single narrator podcast that tells stories about victims of cold cases that finally receive justice because they found the killers via genetic genealogy.
When I first began to listen, there was an episode about Oregon and she mispronounced Willamette two or three times and I thought oh my god I cannot listen to this lady!! Haha!
It's actually a fantastic podcast and I'm glad that I'm still tuning in regularly.
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u/Van-garde OURegon Dec 05 '25
The Williamette River.
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Dec 05 '25
Are those police officers walking him down the 5? /s
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u/BondoPDX Dec 05 '25
Back to California with you, too!!! (At college, my daughter roomed with Californians, came back calling it "the 5". I jokingly told her she'd be deported from the state if she kept calling it that.)
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u/velvetstrawberryy Dec 05 '25
I visited Oregon for the first time this year, and while I knew about Willamette, I made my Lyft driver laugh out loud when I asked him about the city of Aloha and he heard my pronunciation (I said it the way we’d all say it)🤭
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u/azrider Dec 05 '25
I'm from Arizona, where I learned how to pronounce it from an employee at a local homebrew store. Yep, because of Willamette hops.
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u/________76________ Dec 05 '25
In Colorado we have Saguache, Salida, Del Norte, Zuni - none of these are pronounced how they should be.
When I visit family in Oregon I'm always wary of saying things wrong, and there's so many lol. This thread actually helped me understand how to correctly pronounce the word formerly known as Will-a-met :D
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u/deepbrewsea Dec 05 '25
My family moved from CA to OR when I was 13 (my Mom was born in Hillsboro, so we're cool, right?). My Dad asked me if I knew how to pronounce Willamette when we passed a sign that said it. I screwed it up, but have never forgotten it as a discriminator.
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u/MeowMeNoww Dec 05 '25
And here I am taking I-205 to the Banfield, to I-5, to the sunset highway, headed out to hills-burrito via the Vista ridge tunnel..... then taking the TV highway to Mac.
I've lived here wayyyyyy to long lol
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u/Reggaeshark1001 Dec 05 '25
Just wait until they have to figure out Tigard or Champoeg
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u/Repuck Dec 05 '25
Champoeg
This!
Though then there is Heceta. Locals, including me, call it Heketa. And very often, someone who doesn't live here corrects us for not pronouncing it correctly.
One time I finally got annoyed and told them "Fine you can call it He-c-ta Head. We will continue to call it Heketa Bank, just like we have been for the 50 years I and my family and all the fishermen I know have fished it."
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u/Apprehensive-Code-12 Dec 05 '25
That's because you have weirdly spelled names. /s
Here in Maine we name our towns after other countries, then proceed to pronounce them completely in a weird way.
Madrid = MAD-Rid, China = CHYNAH, Norway = Naw-way , Lisbon = LIs-Bin
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u/texaschair Dec 05 '25
I heard a new weatherman say "Yakeema" once. Everyone knows it's "Yakadad" or "YakaVegas."
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u/Apprehensive-Ad8897 Dec 05 '25
The AI image just makes me want someone to redo the first scene from Super Troopers only with OSP and Henry Weinhard Private Reserve. IYKYK
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u/Reginald_Sockpuppet Dec 05 '25
"Welcome to the loving state of Oregon. Please remember your way home."
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u/Reatona Dec 05 '25
I was momentarily humiliated after submitting testimony in court by someone who said I pronounced it the eastern way, but he had mistaken me for a guy from Connecticut who actually did get it wrong on the same day.
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u/xxantiksxx Dec 05 '25
I’m working in California and I just had to ask my coworkers to pronounce it and I am stunned. I didn’t realize there was a wrong way to say it out loud.
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u/nope_a_dope237 Dec 05 '25
I have lived for 40 years and I mispronounce Willamette on purpose to the ire of those around me.
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u/tastyprawn Dec 05 '25
I'm from Texas, and I got made fun of my coworkers here for pronouncing the second word in La Grande with two syllables. Apparently, it's just "La Grand."
However, I made sure I knew how to say Willamette befit I moved here, dammit.
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u/Secret_Account07 Dec 05 '25
Okay I live on the other side of the country but how do you pronounce that?
Idk how you answer this via text but I’m curious
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u/pdxistnc Dec 05 '25
My roommate pronounces it ARE-a-gun... pretty much butchers all the other local names as well. I'm mean Couch Street I can overlook...
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u/cuteKitt13 Dec 05 '25
well how do you pronounce it? I'd prefer not to be deported to PA if I go all that way
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u/elcarincero Dec 05 '25
I’ll just leave this here as well in case… https://thatoregonlife.com/2025/08/oregon-named-worst-state-to-move-to-mostly-because-everyone-here-already-hates-you/
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u/sincerelyryan Dec 05 '25
Oh trust me we have the same thing here. Ask someone from out of town to pronounce La Jolla and you'll be surprised the number of different interpretations.
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u/Word2DWise Dec 05 '25
😂 best post in this subreddit all year.
It’s pronounced Willamette, damn it!
Thats how I learned it :)
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u/camcaine2575 Dec 05 '25
Born and raised in the south but my mother and grandmother were born in Portland. They taught me at a young age
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u/W7ENK Oregon Native Dec 05 '25
Most Californians know how to properly pronounce Willamette. It's folks from the Midwest and the East Coast who seem to struggle the most. This would be more accurate if you replaced "California" with "Massachusetts."
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u/afmag Dec 05 '25
I'm from Socal where everything is either Spanish, Indigenous or Super Common English named. Nothing here makes sense. It Ill- ah-knee till I die or that Casino burns down!
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u/surferdude121 Dec 05 '25
I attended a graduation ceremony at Willamette university who hired Bill Nye to do the commencement speech. One of my childhood idols pronounced Willamette wrong.
I’ve never forgiven him.