Our new chancellor, Kent Syverud, has ignited a bit of a controversy here in our fair city by asking how to pronounce the word “Syracuse.” There are two camps on this – those who are correct, and those who are idiots. People who aren’t idiots pronounce the first syllable “seer” (rhymes with beer). Morons say “sair” (rhymes with “air” or “bear”). How the fuck anybody can get “Sarah-queues” out of something that starts with “syr” is beyond me. I mean, is that country in the Middle East called Sareeah? Of course not. No more than that place where they had the 1984 Winter Olympics is called “Seerayavoh.”<\/p>\n
I used to think it was just one of those locals vs. SU students from Long Island things. I mean, my mother used to say it as if the first syllable was the name of that twit on the iPhone, Siri (as in, “Siricuse”), but my mom was a bit of a Norm Crosby type (she always suspected she had a bit of the “dylexia”), so I’ll cut her some slack. And at least she didn’t say “sarah.” <\/p>\n
And I suppose it could be a bit of the Central NY vs. Western NY thing going on (those WNYers talk funny – they say “pop” instead of soda and my old college buddy from the Buffalo area used to pronounce that thing you sign when you rent an apartment as “leash” and those seats in the upper part of the theater were know as the “ballcony”), but there’s a poll in the local newspaper (whatever it is we call a newspaper these days that exists pretty much only online – I’ll stick with newspaper) that seems to indicate that locals are more or less split between seer and sair.<\/p>\n