My husband tells a very cute tale about trying to learn how to pronounce "Massachusetts" when he was growing up in Afghanistan. Written in Arabic script it would look like this: (of course written from right to left, but nevermind that now) MSCHSTS. Being a foreign word it did not come written with diacritical marks to indicate which vowels go where. The geography teacher would say: "Well, maybe it is Misachasetus. Or maybe it is Masichasetis. Or maybe it is meschesetis." I don't think my husband was totally sure until he came to the U.S. and heard it pronounced here.
BUT GOOD THING HE DIDN"T ARRIVE IN AMERICA IN 2010! Lately a lot of people have been talking about Massachusetts because of the Senatorial seat election there, and I have noticed that many of the commentators on the radio or TV cannot pronounce the name of this state. Most of them mispronounce by saying "Massachuses." They completely do not pronounce the "t"s at the end. So weird.
The truth is that "Massachusetts" is a Native American (Algonquian) name and probably NONE of us is pronouncing it the way they would.
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