Youre saying these Long Island towns wrong even the ones you think you know: Butchered

This will have you spit out your “cawffee.”It’s a dead giveaway that someone isn’t from Long Island if they bungle how to pronounce local communities – but it turns out even 516 and 631 lifers are doing it wrong.Teams like the New York Islanders and Long Island Ducks even post videos of out-of-town players brutally mincing Wantagh, Patchogue and other Native-American names.But you may not have to venture far to find folks messing up Massapequa and Ronkonkoma, which have been anglicized over the past few centuries.Their real pronunciations sound unrecognizable to the modern ear, according to former longtime Unkechaug Nation Chief Harry Wallace, an expert in Algonquian.“Our language wasn’t written in the sense of being translated into English or French — the sound is what they’re trying to copy,” Wallace, based on on the island, told The Post.He compared how Algonquian is the root base of many different Native American languages, some of which were spoken on Long Island, much like the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, all of which stem from Latin.However, during colonial times, much was lost in translation because the European settlers “didn’t know how to spell,” especially with hard consonants like the letter “H,” which are vital to the Algonquian language, he added.

From there, readers would only see, but not hear, the real pronunciation.Ultimately, it turned into a telephone game that has been ongoing for a few hundred years.Wallace recognizes that there’s no one official way to sound out some towns, such as Wantagh, which islanders say as “wan-tah.”And the local way of saying Patchogue as “patch-hog” is pretty close to its origin, he said.These, however, are some Native American-named local towns that even the most bona fide residents are getting wrong, according to Wallace.Townsfolk and the recorded voice on the Long Island Railroad alike sound out this Suffolk community as “co-peg,” but really ...