(no subject)

[darchildre]

There is a lady in the library who has walked over on the ferry. She came over on a whim and so came into the library to find some local info about bus systems and other local towns.

She seems incapable of pronouncing "Poulsbo". We got "Paulville" for a while and, now that's she's seen it written down, we're getting "Paulsborough".

There are absolutely things around here that are not easy to figure out how to pronounce - Sequim, for example, or Puyallup, which still trips me up a little. I would not have thought "Poulsbo" would be one of them.

Comments

[silveradept]

I always think of it as "Poles-Bo", which should be where this person is trying for first top get in the ballpark.

[darchildre]

That is an understandable and acceptable pronunciation, but the first syllable should properly be said as the name "P Paul". The o is the result of a misreading of bad handwriting when the town was named and has stuck - it was meant to be Paulsbo, which is apparently "Paul's town" in Norwegian.

[silveradept]

Ah, so it is that. I'm used to that being a regional accent problem where things that should be an o sound are an ah sound.