I just stumbled upon this.. 13 years after it was first posted... THANK YOU for this story about Derry. What a perfect analogy. Thank you.

Best explanation of how to say it that I have heard is Throw an "Apple-at-cha"

I know this is 13 years old, but there's also a huge difference in dialectical exposures, too. I can't speak for Everyone up my way, but in Central PA, growing up the descendant of Coal Crackers and practically a River Rat, the only pronunciation I've heard in nearly 30 years has been Apple-Lay-Shun and Apple-Lay-Shuh. I didn't even know there WAS another way to pronounce it till I stumbled about a KZfaq documentary on some of the disappearances round my way. It's crazy to me because we have so many cities and waterways comin directly from Indigenous words- Susquehanna, Wilkes-Barre, Shamokin, Chillasquaque, Catawissa, Shawanese, Maxatawny, Mahanoy- just to name a few. Yet for some reason our area is clingin to "Apple-Lay-Shun" for our mountain range. Ain't got a thing against "Apple-Laaa-Shun" mind, but I don't think you can directly pin someone's beliefs on how they learned to pronounce a word. (I promise you, our people were fucked over back in the day, too, and a lot of our coal & timber towns are still trying to recover since we were abandoned, but we won't judge you for how you pronounce a thing. Maybe grin a little because you're an out-of-towner, but we wouldn't hold it against you.

I wouldn't doubt it. They've been trying to "pretty up" our speech since we've been here. Take for instance the phrase "learn you something", as in "I'm gonna learn you something". The experts tell us all the time just how wrong that is, without any knowledge or consideration of the fact that the word learn comes from two Old English words: leornian, which means "to learn", and laeran, which means "to teach". Our use of it comes from the latter... but the "experts" just think we're dumb.

Oh, my goodness! I had the honor of spending the holidays in Belfast once. The interesting part was when I told them my maiden name, and they looked it up in the phone book. They told me my family hailed from Derry and said, “You’re one of us!” Apparently, my family was originally from Derry, and if you call it Derry, you’re of one leaning, and Londonderry, another. Wonderful people, wonderful country. (And the drive to the family home of Donegal was magnificent!) So yes, please pronounce as we do in Appalachia!

I will try to amend my pronounciation as i am willing to make such an effort out of respect *once the situation has been explained*; but one should never blame on malice what can be explained by honest ignorance... or even outright stupidity.

I'm a native from Appalachia as well, and I say it the way she explains it. I think it just depends where in the mountains you lived. I know if you go to Boone, NC and say Apple-lay-shen State, they will get infuriated. It is Apple-latch-an State. Good enough for an old football rival, good enough for me.

The way this word is pronounced is vital to a person's sense of place. As a Southern App-uh-latch-un resident I refuse to pronounce it the northern way, the Hollywood way or the sarcastic, condescending way; app-a-lay-sha. I don't go to Chicago, New York or Jersey and tell people they are pronouncing their place-names incorrectly and I expect the same when you come here. As for your reputable dictionary, all are located in the north and are edited by northern editors! Your smartass comment about "learning to use" anything is both insulting and further identifies you as bigoted northern. The idea of sense of place carries over into family names as well. In WNC we have Buchanan pronounced Buck-Cannon and Buu-Cannon. We have Hooper pronounced Hooop-er and Huper. Also consider Beaufort in NC and SC, mispronounce it there and find out just how fast they correct you.

She has it in a nutshell. Appalachians, and especially the Southerners, take cues from turns of phrase, expressions and inflections to determine how open they can be with the person they're talking too. We were under the heels of too many authority figures to take anything for granted upon first meeting.

Living in Appalachia, and Everyone I have ever met pronounces it Appa-Lay-Chan

Boy-ston, or Bah-ston? (Boston) - also a regional thing. No need to be offended- born and raised in Appalachia and I’ve always said it appa-lay-chia.

Saying that the people who live in Hurricane pronounce it incorrectly is just the type of condescension McCrumb was talking about. It is a proper noun and can be pronounced as the locals do. If I grew up in Mexico and my name was Jesus, would I be forced to call myself by the Americanized/Westernized (and religiously imbued) pronunciation because I moved from Mexico? It's a matter of respect. You call a place name the way those who live there do.

I used to get fired up about this issue too, coming from the southern AppaLATCHian mountains, but turns out that people living in the northern AppaLAYshian mountain regions prounounce THEIR mountain range the other way. They are "from there" too. So who am I to correct *their* pronunciation? Also, it's pronounced Don-NEE-gal, not Don-UH-gal, in Ireland. =)

Thank you very much for that brilliant explanation. As someone from Ireland, you got it right in one ....or, as we say over here, you hit the nail on the head. Well done. Michael Commins, Mayo, Ireland.

That's great...born and raised in the heart of the Appalachians...it really gets my goose to hear somebody tell me how to pronounce it "correctly"

I’m so glad you included the story.... it really does make a difference

That was the point I was trying to make. The same people who try to make sure the pronounce "Louvre" the way they pronounce it in Paris so as to show respect to those people, won't do the same for people in Appalachia. By the way, if you ever want to see just one small part of why people in Appalachians would view outsiders as "the enemy," then read up on how they got the land to build Shenandoah National Park.

Appalachia is a Native American. There is no long A in Native languages. Regardless of who "officially" named the range, or their nationality, the name came from Native origins. The gold cited below might have been anywhere from North Georgia to the Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area of Tennessee, and was one of the reasons that Natives were rounded up and sent on the Trail of Tears. " It is not clear if the “Apalachee” around Tallahassee where de Soto’s men spent the winter of 1539-1540 even called themselves Apalachee. There is evidence that de Soto’s hosts did not consider themselves to be in the province of the Apalachee. When asked where gold might be found, they responded that a people named the Apalache, lived in the mountains many days walk to the north. They were a powerful nation living in a land where gold was abundant. Large gold nuggets could be picked up in the mountain streams. The capital of this Apalachee nation was the city of Yupaha, which supposedly had buildings made out of gold"

Yikes. I (like thousands of people from the north) learned to say "Apple-lay-sha" because that's how Northeners commonly said it (at least in the 1960s). Imagine my surprise when I learned I'm a condescending imperialist who doesn't want to be associated with the place. I say "Apple-latch-a" now because I later learned that's how the First Nations peoples said it. Not because of all the aforementioned divisive rhetoric.

Thank you, Sharyn McCrumb. We love you! I was first introduced to you by fellow graduate students, who read your uproarious Bimbos of the Death Sun aloud, in a van, on a field trip. Wishing you all the best!

Been through and to the Appalachians, hauling lumber back to Texas. Earn their trust and respect, and you will see Appalachia is a beautiful place with many beautiful people.

That is beside the point. The point is, if someone came into your state, Nevada, and heard you say "Nev-adda" and corrected you, would you feel slighted? Possibly not, and odds are you'd just correct them same as we do, except they'd accept it from you. It doesn't work that way here, and ignorant morons come through and literally back-talk us for explaining the pronunciation of the name of our home. You're telling me we shouldn't view that in a condescending manner?

My mom grew up in Clifton Forge, VA and always taught us the "lay" pronunciation. I got so confused about it all when I lived in Asheville, NC for 17 years. NOw, I realize, listening to this video, that she did must not have wanted to be identified as a country hick once she moved to Charlottesville as a preteen. And years later, living in Maryland (where I grew up) she did not want her children to be identified as country hicks. (She could be snobby that way.) Thanks for the explanation! I don't think I will ever say the "latch" without a pause but at least I will know why I feel so subconsciously that the "lay" way is correct even though I have roots there.

I am from Virginia, too. I lived in Marion for quite a while and have a lot of relatives in Tazewell county (Pronounced: Taz-WELL, not Tayse-Well). I always consider Appalachia the capital of Appalachia, so whatever you guys say, I'll go with it. By the Way, Appalachia won about 6 state championships in football.

An interesting insight on this is that the 'short a' vowel sound is derived from Scots. . . . . . .

I used to pronounce "Appalachia" "wrong" because I'm not from the US and until last year, had never heard it pronounced any other way.

As a Texan I've been intrigued with Appalachia ever since spending a week in the Tuckaseegee valley in 1970. Sharyn McCrumb has been my go-to on the subject ever since she started writing her ballad books. On pronunciation I see it this way: The Catskills are in Apple-lay-cha. The Smokies and the Blue Ridge are in Apple-at-cha.

I'm a native of Buncombe County and you are exactly right

To my understanding, the Spanish spelled the name first told to them by the natives "Apalachen" (pronounced with the soft C and the short second A). The Spanish used Apalachee, but to my understanding Apalachen remained the most common. Many maps right up until the 1700s still used that spelling, but the "ian" spelling just kind of sprung up. Considering the strong religious hold on this place, I wouldn't be surprised if it was due to the mild phonetic similarity with the ending of Christian.

After all, someone could very easily hear the word Apalachen and not be completely certain on how to spell it in those days, but one word that would've been quite common to most would've been Christian. Not much of a stretch considering that in the local dialects the word Christian comes out sounding like "Chris-chin" or "Chris-chun". You will rarely, if ever, hear anyone say "Christy-uhn".

I "identify" as Appalchian American, and I agree with this lady

Another good one from Southwest Virginia is Buchanan County....Buck Cannon. From my neck of the woods is Matoaca. It was the secret name of Pocahontas. The locals pronounce it Muh-Toe-uh-ka. Everyone else says Muh-Toe-ka.

That brings us to the problem: people in other places are trusted to know their name. Go to Rodeo Drive and people will laugh at you if you pronounce it correctly. Why? Because "Row-day-oh" is a name, a "row-dee-oh" is an event. That happens everywhere except Appalachia, where we're constantly portrayed as dumb already. It would be like me intentionally mispronouncing your name and then telling you the only reason I'm doing it is because I'm smarter than you. Would you not feel insulted?

In Scots the vowels are clipped in Southern English they are lengthened. In most of Appalachia you can here the Scots influence, If you go to the Carolinas, particularly the coastly areas, you will here a 'long a'.

Donegal is pronounced dun-ee-GAWL or dun-ee-GAUL not dun-ah-gawl, fyi.

I live here; we know how to pronounce the name of our own region. That should be enough. Also, if they can say Apalachicola, FL, why can't they pronounce "Appalachia" correctly?

I disagree. I am also a native and have lived in Boone NC for 24 years. No one around here would ever pronounce it "Appa-lay-chan." So when you say "we" you must be referring to people who live near you. In this neck of the woods, it's "Appa-LATCH-un"

The condescension isn't a factor of the phonics. The condescension is a function of cultural politics, which can have a lot to do with language. And we do not, as individuals, get to choose how those politics of language play out. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard this pronounced in a "corrective" way with a native dialect speaker in the room. McCrumb says it's not "optional" in the sense that if you say it in the corrective way, you will be perceived as colonial and arrogant by the natives of the region. That perception is not a choice.

To enlarge a little on Ms McCrumb's Derry vs Londonderry analogy: The lyric "Danny Boy" was written in 1910 by Frederic Weatherly, an English (NOT Irish) songwriter who later adapted it in 1912 or '13 to "Londonderry Air," a tune from Northern Ireland. I guess we all know the general politics of Anglo-Irish Northern Ireland and McCrumb has made clear the mindset inherent in calling the place Londonderry instead of Derry. There are Irish bands and singers who refuse to include "Danny Boy" in their repertoire.

Yeah, I met Coach Turner a couple of times. Between PV and Appalachia, that's like 12 state championships!

Yes. we had quite a knack for football since it was pretty well all there is to do here. Played three seasons under the great Tom Turner, but they've unfortunately shut Appalachia down and consolidated it with Powell Valley now, as they've also done with four other schools.

It's a hot button issue for us. In fact, just this morning I was at a gas station and was corrected by a tourist on the "correct" pronunciation.

It's a shiboleth. Plus, the regional vernacular stands.

But the point I am making is that they BOTH named it. Hence the different pronunciations. The natives probably had their own name for it ,but that name is lost in history.

I liked this video, but it missed an even simpler reason for why the "lay" pronunciation shouldn't exist, and that's of familiarity. It's the people who live in an area that determines its name, and its pronunciation. It's honestly ridiculous to come up to a person and tell them that they've been mispronouncing their home their entire life. It's their home, and they decide the pronunciation.

The public perception of Appalachians is so flawed. They are some of the sturdiest stock in America, true survivalists, and will be around long after the rest of society crumbles.

It's like saying my name is Michael, but it is pronounced Mickee-eel, which is just silly.

I never knew there was anyone who pronounced it differently!

Ironically, she mispronounced "Donegal." It's actually pronounced Dun (rhymes with fun)- Ee (rhymes with tree) Gawl (rhymes with fall). Dun-ee-gawl.

Ah, the Huguenot expedition. What a laugh. Goulaine came to America around 1560... about 30 years AFTER Narvaez.

She is great! Greetings from Northeast Tennessee, my little corner of Appalachia.

Right it's like trying to tell somebody how to pronounce their own name.

Both sides try to correct the other and say they are wrong on how to say it, but there is a right way, and there is no point in debating it. You want to know how it is said? Ask the French settler Gulaine, the British settlers,or the original Apalachee Indians. Different people have called this place homes at different times. This place is your home as well as mine and we both have the right to say it however we feel it should be said.

Thank you so much!

This is incredibly relevant to the war in Ukraine right now.

The first time I ran into a fellow Appalachian outside of the region at college, he thanked me for pronouncing it correctly. Apple-atcha.

It's not an "opinion" when you're born there.

That Appalachian mountain region is HUGE and has its far reaches as far north as Newfoundland Canada. People in the northern parts of the region say Appa-Lay-Shun/Appa-lay-chin. I'm sorry but you're not gunna tell me how to pronounce the place I grew up. I've hiked over 400 miles of the trail which is less than 15 minutes from my house.

So true ive been corrected by the irish on Derry .

I believe you're referring to the La Salle party, which is incorrect (and laughably so considering Jamestown had already been founded before he was even born) The earliest corroborated adaptation of the name was from Spaniards (Navaez specifically around 1530), and there is no long A vowel sound randomly applied to the middle of words in Spanish either.

Coincidentally, there isn't any native dialect I'm familiar with that uses an SH sound for a CH consonant cluster. One would assume the Spanish spelled it phonetically, so that would mean CH is still the correct pronunciation.

This is an interesting viewpoint, but... I grew up in Virginia and Pennsylvania, my wife in West Virginia and Virginia, sixty years ago. Never once did we hear "Appa-latch-ia." It was always "Appa-laysh-ia". I've also long been a fan of Appalachian folk music, and been to a number of folk festivals ranging from Brandywine, Pennsylvia all the way to San Diego, California. At none of those did I ever hear a "native" speaker from that region use the "latch" pronunciation. I first heard the "latch" pronunciation within the last ten years, and it also sounds awkward and incorrect to me.

The point about Derry versus Londonderry was very interesting. However, someone calling it Londonderry doesn't necessarily mean that person sympathizes with the British rule. It could just be some tourist who saw it on a map and has no clue about the historical and cultural implications. I've always heard this word pronounced "App-a-LAY-chia." Since I've heard it that way, that's the way I thought it was pronounced. That doesn't mean I'm trying to condescend to anyone who lives there, or that I'm an imperialist, or that I don't want to be associated with it. It just means I'm unintentionally ignorant about the correct pronunciation. Now I know better, but please don't make assumptions about people's intentions and opinions and biases just because they mispronounce one commonly mispronounced word.

We have this problem with Louisville

My original post got zapped by accident--- never do something when you have been more than 24 hours without adequate sleep. :p I entered another post just a few minutes ago, prior to accidentally removing the first one.

I can sadly think of a million other examples (e.g., San Sebastián VS Donostia). This is actually applicable to A LOT of different circumstances outside of this specific context. It basically boils down to the fact that IT'S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU. Loved this video. I am from PA, but CONSTANTLY find myself correcting people who say "Appa-lay-shian" who actually then tell me that I am mistaken¿? Loved this.

That stereotype arose about a hundred years ago due to yellow journalism, as well as narrowing down "Appalachia" to just a few southern states. The region in the USA extends up to New York. The stereotype is also offensive to northern Appalachian natives, since we've been basically cut out of inclusion and now accused of being "outsiders." And according to some commenters, somehow extremely offensive simply for existing in a part of Appalachia they've forgotten exists.

The pain she had in her eyes while speaking is the pain Africans have when people treat them as less than! Maybe that could be a common point of connection. Appalachia and Africa are very similar in multiple ways.

The Appalachian plateau to the east of north america😀😀 if anyone is searching for it's location

You're citing French words to reinforce a point about the English language. In this case, the CH originally came from Spaniards, and CH in Spanish does not make an SH consonant sound. Appalachia comes from Spanish, not French, so using a French-inspired consonant sound makes no sense.

What a great way of presenting this information. I wrote a song about driving through Appalachia, pronounced it in a trusting way, and I’ve had so many ask me why I pronounced it wrong in the song. I’m gonna use this example from now on. Well done.

West Virginia and Virginia... My original post got zapped by accident--- never do something when you have been more than 24 hours without adequate sleep. :p I entered another post just a few minutes ago, prior to accidentally removing the first one. Please read it, thanks!

Belfast, woo! Dunno where "Donnagal" is.

Well, your comment to me clearly illustrated her point. You came in making comments "correcting" someone you clearly thought you were more informed than, and yet your correction was completely erroneous.

I grew up at the foot of the Appalachians in the heart of the south and was taught (apple-ay-shen)... it really just depends on your families class and amount of redneck in them lmao

The only names in which "ch" makes an SH sound are French-derived. Chicago. Michigan. Pontchartrain. Appalachia is not derived from French, so there is no phonetic or historical reasoning for an SH sound anywhere in it, nor is there any reason for the A in the middle of the word to carry a long vowel sound.

Omg, thank you!!

Honestly people should be more concerned about keeping the tops on those mountains than the way they're pronounced.

Amen!

Noticed you confirm what this lady says. If you pronounce it "LAY" you're speaking in condescension. I have rarely seen a more condescending post than this one. If you ever wonder why no one trusts you, watch this video and then read this post.

Appalachia is a term that is and was mostly used to describe the general areas of the mountains that were impoverished during the 1st half of the 20th century. So, no, the term doesn't apply to people who live in Maine or New Hampshire and probably not even to people in Georgia. I really do think of it as mostly Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. North Carolina and Tennessees mountains definitely have a different culture than that of the mountains in the Virginias.

What a lovely explanation! Thank you :)

Kind of rich when the name is literally from the word the Spanish used for the natives in the region. I wonder where they all went...

Ah, so just because someone has local experience they're automatically just biased and ignorant? I simply pointed out that using the rest as fluff was pointless considering I live in a place that knows how to pronounce it, but I did study linguistics in college and I'm actually quite well-read on the reasoning behind why it's pronounced how it is.

What if you pronounce it neither way?

Thank you for the story and pronunciation lesson on "Appalachia."

Apparently not using regional slang speaking is the same as political imperialism of Derry. 😒 Ok Karen

Southerners pronounce it differently then the rest of us

The British colonized Ireland much like the Scots-Irish and other white people colonized Appalachia. A more appropriate analogy to Derry vs. Londonderry, I think, would be a Native American name for the region vs. the settler name. I don’t speak Cherokee, but I’ve heard that that the mountains are known as Shaconage to them, which supposedly translates to “Land of the Blue Mist.” Calling the land Appalachia (in any pronunciation) shows your religion and whether you sympathize with colonial rule.

In the beginning, the speaker says, "The safest way to say it is, 'App-ah-latch-uh.'" Near the end, she changes the pronunciation and says, "'App-ah-lah-chuh' means that you are on the side that we trust." Which of these two is correct? Or are these two pronunciations interpreted the same, just don't say, "App-ah-lay-shuh"?

Donegal is not a city in the west side, it is a county 🤣😂🤣

Beautiful!

Everywhere around the United States people including all the News Media Broadcasters use to say "harassment", pronounced ha-rass-ment, up until just a very few short years ago when someone, from somewhere else other than the United States, started calling it " hair-us-ment" which contaminated the word . This is a great example why the American English language is one of the most difficult languages to learn to speak and spell. We are guilty of butchering our own language.

As someone who has lived in Middle Appalachia, I completely support Sharyn's position. As someone who has lived in Northern Ireland for a few years, Sharyn gets her story about half right. "Londonderry" is not what the British usually call the city anymore, it is what the Protestant minority of Northern Ireland call it; it cuts much closer to home than her description of the pronunciation as a leftover of the Irish/British problem. Very few people with their wits about them would call the city "Londonderry" while traveling in Co. Donegal because it would associate them with, at worst, a Protestant triumphalism that's sticking it in the face of the locals. They would probably forgive an American calling it "L'Derry," because we're just pitiful foreigners, but only an intentionally pushy Protestant would use that name in the Republic. Sharyn forgot to mention that some people try to avoid either name by referring to it as "The Maiden City" or just "Stroke," as in Derry/Londonderry (pronounced "Derry stroke Londonderry").

Gotta' call b.s. on this one . West Virginia is too diverse to make sweeping statements about how West Virginians feel about pronouncing a word they rarely use. I've never even heard a dyed-in-the-wool hill person even use the word. I live in W.V. and have had family ties here for over 30 years and know people with thick holler' accents and people who just sound like they're from Ohio, like this lady. Around here, no one cares how you say it and most folks will not make snap judgments on you based on how you say it, or treat you any differently. Of course there are bound to be exceptions. I would never generalize in the other direction, because generalizing never reflects reality. That's usually just elitist crap. Most West Virginians are openly friendly folks who describe where they're from by the state, not the multi-state mountain chain that runs through it, we don't care how you pronounce our mountain chain. Generally, the attitude would be, you can call our mountains anything you like, just don't call us late for supper!

She's exactly correct, that is the absolute litmus test for deciding how open we are going to be with you here. If you say the name correctly - regardless of it's defined 'form' in pronunciation guides written by North Eastern or New England college text book and dictionary writers - you immediately show who you are and if you can/can not be trusted around us, our families or the area. Having a North Eastern or Midwestern writer determine how people are "supposed" to say the name, is no different than the damage caused by the federals in redefining Indian cultural terms in order to displace and confuse the American Indians.

Appalachia is 1000 miles long, spanning 13 states from NY to MS. It should be obvious that we don't have one single accent or one single correct way to pronounce things, including the name of the region. In the Southern Tier of NY (the northern end of the Appalachian region), it's apple-LAKE-uh. Like the town of Apalachin, which is pronounced apple-LAKE-in. Feel free to go there and tell the locals that they are condescending imperialist outsiders. I suspect that this author studied Appalachian traditions in the west of her own state, and mistakenly assumed that the regional accent from Appalachian NC must be the way we all talk. I think that's a common attitude on the East Coast: assuming that a giant stretch of land out west is like one small town where we all know each other and talk the same.

I can tell where DJ is from :)

I find it hilarious that the only time northerners claim to be appa-LATCH-un is to prove that their pronunciation is correct because “they’re Appalachian too.”

Do you see what I am getting at here?