One thing the Missus noticed after we’d left the city for the leafy expanse of the ‘burbs two years ago was that everyone around us had actual New York accents–something she’d rarely encountered after a decade in Manhattan, where the guy in the apartment next to you was as likely to be from Copenhagen as he was Canarsie.
I like the New York accent. I grew up with the New York accident. But I have to put my foot down at a certain popular pronunciation of Hawthorne, by both residents and the occasional train conductor, that sees the tiny Mount Pleasant hamlet pronounced “Hore-thawn.”
Yes, the utterers of this prononciation are taking the ‘r’ from the second syllable and moving it up to the first–with complete and utter disregard for the hamlet’s namesake, kindly nun Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, a helper of the cancer-stricken and the daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Note, she’s not the daughter of Nathaniel Horethawn.
I’ve heard perfectly well-educated and gainfully employed lifelong residents say “Hore-thawn,” and I’ve heard Metro-North conductors say it too–usually the same fellas who pronounce the stop before Horethawn…I mean Hawthorne–as Vuh-halla, an egregious affront to fallen Vikings everywhere.
Let us collectively agree to drive the Hores out of our fair hamlet.