"Cairo," Illinois; "New Madrid," Missouri

       On my way recently to the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service to read the day’s newspapers over the air for the blind and print-impaired, I heard an announcer on my car radio slightly uncomfortably pronouncing the name of a nearby town.  I wondered if he was new to the area.

       Then on our own broadcast, as my reading partner Mike read an article on the floods in the Midwest, I realized I had an advantage because I grew up in the Midwest while Mike grew up in Burbank.

       If you hadn’t heard it occasionally, how would you know the Illinois town “Cairo” is pronounced KAY-roe or that “New Madrid” in Missouri is pronounced nu-MAD-rid, not nu-muh-DRID?  We’ve all got some “inside” linguistic knowledge simply because of where we were raised.