Re: Pronunciation of Station Names

["Chris Brownbill" <cbrnbill@enternet.com.au>]

Geoff Lambert <G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au> wrote in article  
> 
> When I first came to Sydney from Victoria, it struck me that
> Sydney-siders pronounced things differently and very much tended to
> stress the last syllable of words- to my mind, the classical example
> of this was Cowan which, Where I come from would have been pronounced
> with no stress on either syllable, almost as though it were Japanese.
> 
> To my ear, Sydneysiders pronounce it cowAN, not COW-an, as above and
> certainly no cow-un, as in Victoria.  
> 
> There are other examples amongst place-names, but they all slip my
> memory for now
> 
> Geoff Lambert
> 

I agree with you.  The classic contrast is the NSW locations of Bulli,
Bondi, Boggabri, Quirindi and others which are pronounced 'bull-EYE' and
'bond-EYE', bogga-BRY and Cur-IN-DYE compared to Merri in Melbourne which
is pronounced 'Merry'.

This could also be the explanation for the alternative pronunciations of
Canberra, ie CAN-bra versus can-BERRA - maybe depends where you come from.

Chris Brownbill.