Of course it's pronounced that way, just like Ponts duh Leee-on in Atlanta and Luh-FAY-it up by me. Maybe I'll skip Austria and just go to south Georgia. We seem to stop at the Pilot station across the interstate there every time we go to FL, but I've never noticed the Pig Jig place.
Well, stop on by Cairo, Georgia, too. Birthplace of Jackie Robinson and unlike Cairo, Egypt, is pronounced KAY-ro. Not sure if Rome, Georgia was built in one day, but at least it's pronounced the same as the Italian city.
There's a little town named Versailles near where my family is from in west-central Illinois, pronounced "ver-sales" of course, and a few years ago some people made shirts that said "Versailles: We'll pronounce it how we want to!"
They have a Versailles near Lexington Kentucky where they say the same thing. When I moved there as a kid and pronounced it correctly, they looked at me like I just sucked 10 dicks.
This reminds me of when I was in Arkansas, and I was looking for a road next to a town called Bella Vista. A lot of the country roads aren't marked in Arkansas, and some how I kept missing it, so I stopped at a store and asked for directions. The people behind the counter had no idea where I was talking about. I stopped at another store. Same thing; apparently this town didn't exist. Finally, I stopped at one last store, and brought the map in with me. When I pointed out the town, the old woman behind the counter said "OH! You mean BELL-uh VIS-tuh!" I had been pronouncing it like an idiot (correctly) all this time (BAY-ah VEES-tah), and nobody could tell what I was saying.
There is a Versailles in Ohio as well. I assume that the small French community there named the town and the German majority around them led to the current pronunciation.
Also in Kentucky(I'm sensing a trend) they had a Buena Vista road that they tenderly pronounced byoona vista. I couldn't even wrap my head around that shit. They have a way of tarding up anything remotely ethnic.
Austin is that way too with at least 2 streets that I remember. Guadalupe is pronounced Gwad-ah-loop and Manchaca is pronounced Man-chack.
Don't even get me started. Around here, we have a street named Kuykendahl Road, pronounced kirkendoll. They even added an R.
We have a lot of local Native American tribal names around here. Luckily, since they didn't really have a written language, they are spelled phonetically. It might take you a minute to sound it out, but you'll probably get to where you're supposed to be going.
Around here we have 2 towns, named Milan and Orion. they are pronounced "My-lan" and "ore-ion". it's like they said "Culture?....fuck that".
I lived for a couple of years in a town called Paso Robles. Everyone who ever came to visit me tried to pronounce it in the correct spanish style, rolling the R and all that, but no... It should be pronounced as lilly-white as possible. Pass-oh Row-Bulls. Half an hour south of that is San Luis Obispo, which the more culturally sensitive members of my family tried to pronounce as Sahn Louie Oh-Bees-Po. Nope, it's San Luis Obispo, again, just as white as can be.
This just in: we're all going to die soon. Planet 9 is on its way, a frozen rogue four times our size. I know this is true because the New York Post told me so. R.I.P journalism
I don't know if you guys saw it, but the greatest police chase in the universe took place today in L.A.