With 50 states in the US it can be hard to remember all of them, and even harder to nail their pronunciations.
A recent study showed the top five US states that even Americans can’t seem to get right.
Preply reported that Americans are just realizing that they don’t quite have all 50 nifty memorized, especially when it comes to articulation.
They rounded up the top state name pronunciations that Americans search for and the results are a little embarrassing.
From east to west and north to south, there are five that no one can seem to get right.
Coming in at number five is the sixth state of the 13 original colonies, Massachusetts.
Despite being the home of many of America’s most prominent historical events, many people are still lost when it comes to just how to say it.
The first part of the word is simple, but phonetically speaking the ending should read ‘SETTS.’
Boston Harbor is a famous landmark in the commonly mispronounced Massachusetts
The Chicago River houses one of Illinois’s most famous skylines
To properly pronounce the state’s name the last five letters should be read as ‘SITS,’ instead.
The proper pronunciation is mass-uh-choo-SITS.
Fourth on the list was the logic defying state of Illinois.
Americans tend to get tripped up around the silent letters at the end of the word.
Illinois is a French word for the illini Native American tribes, making its pronunciation frustratingly French as well.
While in English, one might want to say il-ee-NOISE, the correct pronunciation is ‘il-uh-NOY.
One of the US’s western-most states comes in at number three. Oregon is apparently a tricky tongue twister for many Americans.
In English, the tendency is to pronounce the last three letters like the word ‘gone’.
Oregon is home to natural views like Crater Lake
Las Vegas is the most popular city in the state of Nevada for gambling, nightlife and entertainment
But to say the word correctly, the ending should sound like the word ‘gun’.
The Beaver State can either be said as ORE-uh-gun or ORY-gun, but locals blend the word together and say ORE-uh-g’n.
The home of Vegas, deserts, and silver rings in at number two.
Nevada’s hotly debated pronunciation is often defended by locals, apparently leading to thousands of Google searches from their out of state friends.
The mistake non-Nevadans make is pronouncing the middle ‘a’ as a soft ‘VAH’.
Unfortunately for those that say otherwise, the true pronunciation for the silver state is nuh-VA-duh.
And in first place is the phonetically nightmarish state of Arkansas.
With Kansas just a few states over it seems that the obvious pronunciation would be ‘are-Kansas’. But frustratingly, that’s not even close.
Colorful rock formations and a road in Valley of Fire state park in Nevada
The Ozark Mountains are one of Arkansas’s most recognizable attractions
The bright lights of the Vegas strip in Nevada is seen above
Arkansas, like Illinois, derived from a French word and is pronounced as such.
The French love to leave out consonant sounds, especially at the end of a word. That makes the true pronunciation AR-kuhn-saw.
