The old insist on strange pronunciations for streets

WEAR MISS MANNERS: Our city is a typical suburb of a big city. It was originally settled by German farmers, but over the years it has become a rich variety of subdivisions and malls.

Many of the original family farms have been honored in street names. Long-standing descendants of the families, or those who knew them, stick to the original pronunciations, but the majority of society no longer does. For example: Oldtimers insist that Mueller Street be pronounced “Miller,” not “Mew-ler.”

The thing is, I’ve lived in this town since the early 1970s and never heard anyone refer to that street as “Miller.” If someone gave me directions and said, “Turn on Miller Street,” I would have passed the “Mueller” sign and kept looking.

I think it’s great to name a street after a family, but that the family’s right to a police statement is limited. The whole point of naming streets is to make navigation easier. If society at large has implicitly agreed to call a street “Mew-ler” because that is the more intuitive, contemporary interpretation of the spelling, then that becomes the correct way to say the street name.

Those who pronounce these streets “wrong” are told on social media that they owe it to these families to adopt the “correct” pronunciation. This seems unnecessary to me – and I have a Dutch surname that no one can pronounce without guidance.

GREAT READER: Snapping at people to do something that hasn’t been done in decades is unlikely to be effective. Far better to use one of the few benefits Miss Manners sees with social media – which is that people can opt out of group conversations about such issues, rather than fuel the fire by continuing to argue about them.

DEAR MISS MANIER: I am a male who is 6-foot-6 and 62 years old. All my life I have found myself bent in half when greeting women for whom a welcome hug is appropriate.

My aunts, cousins, sisters and any number of others can throw up their arms and initiate a hug.

Carnevalestoricocivitonico

The old insist on strange pronunciations for streets

Kaneb

Kaneb

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