The Public Address Guy at Grand Central.
Please, please please stop calling Stamford “Stam FORD.” Despite the way it’s spelled, it’s pronounced Stam-ferd, and the accent is on the first syllable.
But that doesn’t matter to you. No, every day, in fact, several times a day, you get on the loudspeaker and say things like “The 9:10 to Stam-FORRRRDDDD will make its first stop at Mount Vernon East, then make all local stops to Stam-FORRRRDDDD.”
Why do you do that? Surely you’ve never heard anyone else on the planet pronounce Stam-ferd as Stam-FORRRRDDDD. Heck, half the news media around the world is talking about the crazed TV chimp attacking the woman in North Stamford, and no one is saying it happened in North Stam-FORRRRDDDD.
We don’t go for geographic mispronunciations in these parts. If you heard someone referring to that road stretching between rivers in lower Manhattan as HEW-ston Street, you’d kick them in the shins. If you heard someone referring to that traffic-snarled route to the airports at the Van Wick, well…actually, no one really knows how that’s pronounced.
But you get the picture. STAM-ferd, dude. Learn it. Practice it. Say it.
And if you continue to stay Stam-FORRRRDDDD, I know an ill-tempered nasty chimp who doesn’t like to have his hometown mispronounced.
Irritated,
Trainjotting
[image: flickr]