Fun fact, there is a large population of German, Czech's, and Slovaks in Central Texas. Lot of towns have weird names and pronunciations due to all the mixing of languages with Spanish and Native American.
I live in Texas and Texas was settled by people from all over the world and since we are so large the towns are named from the country the settlers were from.
About Texas place names: remember that in Texas there is a strong Mexican influence, also a huge German influence then American English and Native American languages with a little Cajun French possible in the far eastern part of the state. In pronouncing place names first try to determine which of these languages the name came from then figure out what a Texan with that characteristic Texas accent is likely to do with that word. With some luck this will get you about half way there and it really adds charm to the Texan language (Texan is its own language just as much as 'Merican is).
Got quite a few since I live in Andrews, TX. I have been to Waxahachie before and it's a really cool town with a really cool old courthouse in the middle of town.
Native Texan here. I knew these would be difficult for y’all. They’re difficult for a lot of people. I grew up hearing them pronounced properly, so of course they were easy for me. Great reaction. ❤
I live in East Texas and many the towns were of Mexican descent such as San Antonio & Mexia. Also German descent such as New Braunfels, Boerne and Fredericksburg for a couple of examples. There’s Native American named towns. We’re a little of everything in Texas.
Several of these towns are really close to San Antonio. Gruene, New Braunfels and Boerne are all along Hwy 46. Luckenbach is a close drive from Boerne.
There’s a ton of Native American names all over the country. Several towns in my area up here in NY. Our local favorite that’s not a town but an expressway is the Scajaquada
As a little kid most of us learn how to pronounce our towns with weird names from weather watches. 😂 there really isn't consistency because some are based in Spanish, some in Native American, some German, etc.
Grahams, me again. I just stumbled across this video from a man I've watched for years. It's of their day driving through Glacier National Park: Going-to-the-Sun Road at Glacier National Park | Complete Tour End-to-End
So I live and have alwasy lived not far from Dumas. They were in our confrence for sports and were a rival of ours(especially in football). Their school mascot is the Demons. We loved calling them the Dumbass Demons lol. I don't think we ever called them Dumas! Also I was in the marching band and they had the worst field I've ever marched on and thought I'd get forstbite there.There is another town that was an even bigger rival of ours, that has a name no one pronounces correctly either that we also had a not nice nickname for. Good times lol.
Very impressed with Mrs. Graham here, she got quite a few. Even whispered Waxahachie and Nacogdoches pretty much correctly under her breath 😂Re: Nacogdoches, I'm sure other folks have already brought up Natchitoches, Louisiana not too far away over the Sabine River-now THAT's one you'd never guess lol.
Gruene is the German word for green & pronoun just like we say green. There is a pattern. But it is in Spanish, Native American, and so on but with Texas twist too. So, good luck figuring out the pattern.
Everyone I know and at schools, new Braunfels was always pronounced with a misplaced s, New Brawns full. Boerne is mourn but with a B. Yeah, I've never heard anyone call Palacios pa lash is. Pa las ce os, basically the way they were all guessing.
What you find in Texas is the place names all illustrate the various ethnic cultures that make up the state. From Acadian-French (Cajun) places like Palacios and Beaumont, to American Indian names like Nacogdoches and Waxahachie, to German/Czech names like Luckenbach and New Braunfels and Spanish names like Mexia and Refugio.
Being from Texas originally, I did quite well. We could tell every time a person not from Texas was new on the news or weather. They couldn’t pronounce Refugio (where I went for out of town football games).
You guys have to definitely do Wisconsin cities and towns!! We have some very difficult ones. As a Wisconsinite, some of the spelling in these towns and cities are too confusing and long with the whole alphabet it feels like 😅
Grahams, the way Gruene is pronounced Green is because it's in an area of TX around San Antonio (roughly) where thousands of people spoke something called Texas German. Gruene translates as green, so that's how they pronounce it. New Braunfels used to be the 'capital' of this area. You can find a bunch more of these videos for different states, but the same panel. After watching them on several occasions, I started searching for pronunciation anomalies like this across the country maybe 5 years ago, and my list is, at this moment, up to 2581, with another 336 in Canada. The thing that drives up the total to such an unreal number is that in addition to English, the names also originate in 1 of the following: Basque, British English, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Nahuatl, Norwegian, Old Norse, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh, plus at least 120 US tribal languages.
we have so many influences from other countries, plus native tribe names. Combine that with Texas accents and you get all kinds of interesting pronunciations. I have lived here most of my life and I still can't get over Italy, TX (it-lee)
Aloha!🤙 Some Hawaii place names: Kaka'ako, Kaaawa, Kalaniana'ole, and the name of the state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua'a 😃 I had fun trying to pronounce place names in Texas when I was stationed there, in Bexar County, no less 😁.
A lot of names came from from Mexican, Spanish, French, & various Native American languages & most have Americanized altered pronunciations. Originally there were over 600 Native American tribes in U.S. each with their own language which heavily influenced a lot of names of towns & rivers around U.S. & are difficult for most people to pronounce who aren't familiar with them. (Check out some of names in Pennsylvania.) Currently there are 574 Federally Recognized Native American Tribes.
Pretty much every state has a bunch of city or places with weird names. I'm from Washington state and you have a number of Native American names and you can tell if you are a local pretty quickly based on how you pronounce places. Places like Puyallup, Sequim, Mukilteo, and Steilacoom. It all depends how you pronounce each syllable. There are many words or phrases that are unique to each region like in Washington and the Pacific Northwest things like "muckety-muck" and "the mountain is out".
Names come about in strange ways, and every state has some. My home state has places like Kanawha, Monongalia, Monongahela, and Etowah all of which originated from native American words.
I’m from Nacodgoches and they taught us a song in Elementary School to spell it. I still sing it to spell it 😂 Also.. it is the oldest town in Texas, and there is a whole story about Indian brothers- Nacogdoches and Natchitoches (in Louisiana)
Many of these towns have Mexican names, and in their language, many times the "J" is pronounced like a "H". Such as "Jiba" (Hiba). Think of "jalapeno", which is really said as "halapeno". Also keep in mind that in Mexican, if you see "eno" at the end of a word, it is pronounced "enyo", again sych as "jalapeno", which is said as "halapenyo". I got ALL of them right, but I'm FROM south Texas!
American place names come from English, French, German, Spanish and many different native American languages. I have lived in some towns with strange native American names which no one outside those towns can pronounce them correctly. All a local native person needs to do is ask a person how to pronounce the local town names to see if they are a local or not.
A blend of English-Spanish-German_and SLOVAK Almost all of these are in the general Central Texas region where all these populations bumped into one another and had the figure out how to speak the others language, sort-of. And the little white star is only VAGUELY accurate. And they're no stranger than Natchitoches, Louisiana (Nak-uh-tesh)
Because a lot of German immigrants found their way to the hill country of Texas, some towns have a German origin while others have Spanish/Mexican origins.
There's a Rosenberg outside of Houston. To be fair, these are the white folk pronunciations. A Tejano would pronounce the names in the proper Spanish. The reason behind the many pronunciations has to do with the Six Flags.
The thing to realize about Texas is that it was a very sparsely colonized part of Mexico until the 1800's at which point a mix of mostly Americans settled there, in the 1830's it broke away from Mexico, was its own country for a few years before joining the US. At this point it opened up to many more settlers, with many groups coming directly from Europe as organized settlers, therefore you have a mix of towns founded by groups of Mexicans, Americans, Germans, Poles, Czechs, freed slaves, etc. So you end up with German towns like New Braunsfels (named by Prince Carl of Germany for his home city, he lead an organized group bringing German settlers to central Texas), , Spanish Mexican towns like Mexia (named after a Mexican born hero of the Texas war of independence), Nacogdoches (historical / mythical? chief of the local Indian tribe, brother of Natchitoches, which has a town named after him about 100 miles to the east in Louisiana), others like Dumas were named after the towns founder Louis Dumas.
Welcome to American Spellings and Sounds. Remember we are a melting pot and all the pronunciations just get thrown in. The Native American words are kinda hard for me and then you throw in all the other languages it's FUNNY!
@0:26 If you think the name of the state is hard you should try pronouncing some of Massachusetts' town names. They've got all the nonsense of old English town pronunciations with a heavy mix of native words and names.
I love y'all's videos and get Texas is your favorite state, but PLEASE for the love of God show other states beyond Texas, Cali, Florida and New York. Everyone i know who watches reaction videos are all getting kinda tired of the never ending Texas videos, unless they're from those places to begin with. There's 46 other states 😅🤷
Now that I think about it, you're LITERALLY just a copy cat version of the UA-cam Channel: Your New Zealand Family. Must be nice to copy others and not come up with Content that's actually Original lmao!
Texas has German, Czech and Slovak populations concentrated mainly in the central part of the state. It also has Native American heritage mixed in as well as a large Hispanic population. It’s understandable when non-Texans can’t pronounce the names of the towns. I myself (born, raised and still live in the Lone Star State) even come across town names still that I have trouble pronouncing. Although, I didn’t have any trouble at all with pronouncing Nacogdoches as I hear the name mentioned on a semi-regular basis. ❤️🤍💙 🤠
![American reacts to Posts That Prove American's Think That Only They Exist [part 2]](/img/n.gif)
Fun fact, there is a large population of German, Czech's, and Slovaks in Central Texas. Lot of towns have weird names and pronunciations due to all the mixing of languages with Spanish and Native American.
I was gonna post a similar comment. I know there’s a lot of German influence Mexican Native American Slovak.
You mean Indians don’t be pc
I know....because I live in East Texas and have Czech, German and Choctaw ancestry..
Luckenbach is easy if you have heard the song by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
Take me to Luckenbach, Texas .......... with Waylon, Wlillie and the boys.
@stocks1000 yep!
Hello From Texas
Mexia was easy for me having lived just south of there for 2 years. Humble is were stayed at truck stop.
I live in Texas and Texas was settled by people from all over the world and since we are so large the towns are named from the country the settlers were from.
WE have a Rosenberg, Texas.
Nacogdoches is mentioned in the John Wayne movie "Big Jake"
I’ve lived in Texas my whole life and I still got some wrong!
Same
We do that so we know the people who just moved here or are visiting haha
About Texas place names: remember that in Texas there is a strong Mexican influence, also a huge German influence then American English and Native American languages with a little Cajun French possible in the far eastern part of the state. In pronouncing place names first try to determine which of these languages the name came from then figure out what a Texan with that characteristic Texas accent is likely to do with that word. With some luck this will get you about half way there and it really adds charm to the Texan language (Texan is its own language just as much as 'Merican is).
Hi from Texas
I live in Waxahachie, Texas.
Got quite a few since I live in Andrews, TX. I have been to Waxahachie before and it's a really cool town with a really cool old courthouse in the middle of town.
Native Texan here. I knew these would be difficult for y’all. They’re difficult for a lot of people. I grew up hearing them pronounced properly, so of course they were easy for me. Great reaction. ❤
My favorite Texas town name is a simple one, Italy … which is pronounced ITT-Lee
Y'all dun good ! Missed nearly ⅓ of them and I lived in Texas for 9 years.
From Burnet here! BURN-it DURN-it.
Lol, there is a lot of Spanish and German influences here in Texas.
Lol I'm here for this. 😂
I am from Lubbock Texas everyone mispronounces it 😂
If your ever visiting here just remember, there's only one 'S' in New Braunfels
Hell, even most Texans don't seem to get that part right lol. Drives me crazy!
I live in East Texas and many the towns were of Mexican descent such as San Antonio & Mexia. Also German descent such as New Braunfels, Boerne and Fredericksburg for a couple of examples. There’s Native American named towns. We’re a little of everything in Texas.
You should try cities in Wisconsin
Louisiana has some hard ro pronounce places too.
After 75 years, I am fairly good at pronouncing most of them. Lots of German settlers here in Central Texas. 👍❤
Several of these towns are really close to San Antonio. Gruene, New Braunfels and Boerne are all along Hwy 46. Luckenbach is a close drive from Boerne.
That was fun. 😊
There’s a ton of Native American names all over the country. Several towns in my area up here in NY. Our local favorite that’s not a town but an expressway is the Scajaquada
I live in Mas a two ships basket ball hall of fame area.
You oughta do some of Matt Michell’s Bless your Rank he was one of the guys in the video. You love to see his takes on southern foods
As a little kid most of us learn how to pronounce our towns with weird names from weather watches. 😂 there really isn't consistency because some are based in Spanish, some in Native American, some German, etc.
Howdy from Texas.
What Kim Chi said below but he forgot the Swedish
influence as well
Grahams, me again. I just stumbled across this video from a man I've watched for years. It's of their day driving through Glacier National Park:
Going-to-the-Sun Road at Glacier National Park | Complete Tour End-to-End
As a born and raised Texas native, I didn’t even know a lot of these town names. Texas is just huge! Love your reactions to this vid.
So I live and have alwasy lived not far from Dumas. They were in our confrence for sports and were a rival of ours(especially in football). Their school mascot is the Demons. We loved calling them the Dumbass Demons lol. I don't think we ever called them Dumas! Also I was in the marching band and they had the worst field I've ever marched on and thought I'd get forstbite there.There is another town that was an even bigger rival of ours, that has a name no one pronounces correctly either that we also had a not nice nickname for. Good times lol.
Very impressed with Mrs. Graham here, she got quite a few. Even whispered Waxahachie and Nacogdoches pretty much correctly under her breath 😂Re: Nacogdoches, I'm sure other folks have already brought up Natchitoches, Louisiana not too far away over the Sabine River-now THAT's one you'd never guess lol.
Gruene is the German word for green & pronoun just like we say green. There is a pattern. But it is in Spanish, Native American, and so on but with Texas twist too. So, good luck figuring out the pattern.
Everyone I know and at schools, new Braunfels was always pronounced with a misplaced s, New Brawns full.
Boerne is mourn but with a B.
Yeah, I've never heard anyone call Palacios pa lash is. Pa las ce os, basically the way they were all guessing.
What you find in Texas is the place names all illustrate the various ethnic cultures that make up the state. From Acadian-French (Cajun) places like Palacios and Beaumont, to American Indian names like Nacogdoches and Waxahachie, to German/Czech names like Luckenbach and New Braunfels and Spanish names like Mexia and Refugio.
Lot of Native American place names, as well as Spanish and German. A real melting pot!
Yall should check out their louisiana town names video too
In Florida we have native American names on towns
I grew up in Palacios, Texas.
Being from Texas originally, I did quite well.
We could tell every time a person not from Texas was new on the news or weather. They couldn’t pronounce Refugio (where I went for out of town football games).
You guys have to definitely do Wisconsin cities and towns!! We have some very difficult ones. As a Wisconsinite, some of the spelling in these towns and cities are too confusing and long with the whole alphabet it feels like 😅
I don't live to far away from Waxahachie.
You guys should try some of the Native American place names in New England,
A lotta funny names in Arkansas, smack over Arkansas and flippin Arkansas to name a couple
Grahams, the way Gruene is pronounced Green is because it's in an area of TX around San Antonio (roughly) where thousands of people spoke something called Texas German. Gruene translates as green, so that's how they pronounce it. New Braunfels used to be the 'capital' of this area.
You can find a bunch more of these videos for different states, but the same panel. After watching them on several occasions, I started searching for pronunciation anomalies like this across the country maybe 5 years ago, and my list is, at this moment, up to 2581, with another 336 in Canada. The thing that drives up the total to such an unreal number is that in addition to English, the names also originate in 1 of the following: Basque, British English, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Nahuatl, Norwegian, Old Norse, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh, plus at least 120 US tribal languages.
Watch the one where they try to pronouce Louisiana town name
Too easy for me. I was born in Burnet and I used to live in Palestine. So all of these are familiar to me.
I only missed one 😂😂😂….and yes I’m from Texas 🤣
And next up, Texas road names. Kuykendahl
You have to remember that in Texas there is a Spanish influence in some of the town names.
Yeah American places have a lot of names from native American tribes as well as Spanish French and Dutch
Some many places are mixed with Native American, Spanish, and English. So there really isn't a pattern 😂
Try either "Lisle" (Illinois) or "Oconomowoc" (Wisconsin)
we have so many influences from other countries, plus native tribe names. Combine that with Texas accents and you get all kinds of interesting pronunciations. I have lived here most of my life and I still can't get over Italy, TX (it-lee)
Aloha!🤙 Some Hawaii place names: Kaka'ako, Kaaawa, Kalaniana'ole, and the name of the state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua'a 😃 I had fun trying to pronounce place names in Texas when I was stationed there, in Bexar County, no less 😁.
There are plenty of hard to pronounce towns and street names is WNY (Buffalo NY area). Our main expressway is the Scajaquada. Skah-jack-quid-ah.
A lot of names came from from Mexican, Spanish, French, & various Native American languages & most have Americanized altered pronunciations. Originally there were over 600 Native American tribes in U.S. each with their own language which heavily influenced a lot of names of towns & rivers around U.S. & are difficult for most people to pronounce who aren't familiar with them. (Check out some of names in Pennsylvania.) Currently there are 574 Federally Recognized Native American Tribes.
There was a song about this town in 1977 by country singer Waylon Jennings: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luckenbach,_Texas_(Back_to_the_Basics_of_Love)
Pretty much every state has a bunch of city or places with weird names. I'm from Washington state and you have a number of Native American names and you can tell if you are a local pretty quickly based on how you pronounce places. Places like Puyallup, Sequim, Mukilteo, and Steilacoom. It all depends how you pronounce each syllable. There are many words or phrases that are unique to each region like in Washington and the Pacific Northwest things like "muckety-muck" and "the mountain is out".
Names come about in strange ways, and every state has some. My home state has places like Kanawha, Monongalia, Monongahela, and Etowah all of which originated from native American words.
I’m from Nacodgoches and they taught us a song in Elementary School to spell it. I still sing it to spell it 😂
Also.. it is the oldest town in Texas, and there is a whole story about Indian brothers- Nacogdoches and Natchitoches (in Louisiana)
Texas has very diverse people here from German irish Slovakia Mexican native American Turkish and so on
Although not located in Texas, I'd like to hear you two take a stab at the name of the town where I was born: Opelika, Alabama
Many of these towns have Mexican names, and in their language, many times the "J" is pronounced like a "H". Such as "Jiba" (Hiba). Think of "jalapeno", which is really said as "halapeno". Also keep in mind that in Mexican, if you see "eno" at the end of a word, it is pronounced "enyo", again sych as "jalapeno", which is said as "halapenyo". I got ALL of them right, but I'm FROM south Texas!
I knew most , but i've lived in texas for twenty years so...
Im from Lithiuania
Alot of central Texas was settled by German people. So names like Luckenbach, Fredericksburg are German names
They just hate us cause they ain’t us 😂
This proves that Texas is "regarded".
I'm from Mineola Texas and pronounces it wrong all the time. And Nacogdoches is the oldest town in Texas.
American place names come from English, French, German, Spanish and many different native American languages. I have lived in some towns with strange native American names which no one outside those towns can pronounce them correctly. All a local native person needs to do is ask a person how to pronounce the local town names to see if they are a local or not.
A blend of English-Spanish-German_and SLOVAK Almost all of these are in the general Central Texas region where all these populations bumped into one another and had the figure out how to speak the others language, sort-of. And the little white star is only VAGUELY accurate. And they're no stranger than Natchitoches, Louisiana (Nak-uh-tesh)
It's a mix of Spanish, English and German. Three of the main cultures.
Some of these towns are Indigenous or regional Mexican names.
Because a lot of German immigrants found their way to the hill country of Texas, some towns have a German origin while others have Spanish/Mexican origins.
I live in Mexia
ok, not trying to make fun but think it would be fun to hear the kids try the names too…
You should try Iowa town names.
Try pronunciation of Oklahoma towns
There's a Rosenberg outside of Houston. To be fair, these are the white folk pronunciations. A Tejano would pronounce the names in the proper Spanish. The reason behind the many pronunciations has to do with the Six Flags.
There is a Tokio Texas
The thing to realize about Texas is that it was a very sparsely colonized part of Mexico until the 1800's at which point a mix of mostly Americans settled there, in the 1830's it broke away from Mexico, was its own country for a few years before joining the US. At this point it opened up to many more settlers, with many groups coming directly from Europe as organized settlers, therefore you have a mix of towns founded by groups of Mexicans, Americans, Germans, Poles, Czechs, freed slaves, etc. So you end up with German towns like New Braunsfels (named by Prince Carl of Germany for his home city, he lead an organized group bringing German settlers to central Texas), , Spanish Mexican towns like Mexia (named after a Mexican born hero of the Texas war of independence), Nacogdoches (historical / mythical? chief of the local Indian tribe, brother of Natchitoches, which has a town named after him about 100 miles to the east in Louisiana), others like Dumas were named after the towns founder Louis Dumas.
Welcome to American Spellings and Sounds. Remember we are a melting pot and all the pronunciations just get thrown in. The Native American words are kinda hard for me and then you throw in all the other languages it's FUNNY!
How do we send him videos to react to?
@0:26 If you think the name of the state is hard you should try pronouncing some of Massachusetts' town names. They've got all the nonsense of old English town pronunciations with a heavy mix of native words and names.
Don't feel bad I feel like a dumb American but most towns aren't named like this in America
I love y'all's videos and get Texas is your favorite state, but PLEASE for the love of God show other states beyond Texas, Cali, Florida and New York. Everyone i know who watches reaction videos are all getting kinda tired of the never ending Texas videos, unless they're from those places to begin with. There's 46 other states 😅🤷
Now that I think about it, you're LITERALLY just a copy cat version of the UA-cam Channel: Your New Zealand Family. Must be nice to copy others and not come up with Content that's actually Original lmao!
Texas has German, Czech and Slovak populations concentrated mainly in the central part of the state. It also has Native American heritage mixed in as well as a large Hispanic population.
It’s understandable when non-Texans can’t pronounce the names of the towns. I myself (born, raised and still live in the Lone Star State) even come across town names still that I have trouble pronouncing.
Although, I didn’t have any trouble at all with pronouncing Nacogdoches as I hear the name mentioned on a semi-regular basis. ❤️🤍💙 🤠