Can Michigan be prounounced "Mitchigan" or always "Mishigan"?

[sellebraytion]

Help me settle a minor disagreement🙂

Yanbu - it can be pronounced either way.
Yabu - everyone pronounces it Mishigan unless they have their head in the sand.

Tanzania = Tan-zan-EE-a.

But bizarrely, Tasmania = Tas-MAY-nee-a

AgonyAgatha
Is Michelle pronounced "Mishelle" or "Mitchell"?

That might give you your answer.

The name Michelle has French origins. Does Michigan have French origins too?

But that would make it Meeshigan as in Meeshell

Michigan is pronounced with a sh sound by every American I’ve ever come across.

Knowing that is just a matter of familiarity and nothing to do with being “stupid”. I get a bit of a giggle from all of the many ways I’ve heard Americans say “Worcestershire sauce”, or my French friend say “Loughborough” but it doesn’t make them stupid… any more than my total inability to pronounce Reims correctly makes me stupid.

Torona?

I’ve always thought it was Mitch I gan. I’ve never been there.
I know people who pronounce Cheryl as Ch-e-ryl rather than Sh-e-ryl.
Again there are a lot of UK place names with the hard Ch sound.

I remember when Leicester City were all over the news. Never heard any American pronounce it correctly. Even hard for them saying it was in a place called Leicestershire!

Michelle is a French word and thus subject to French phonetics.

Michigan is an Ojibwe name.

It doesn't follow that they would be pronounced with the same sound.

Oh, God, only discovered how Reims was pronounced this summer!

It’s not quite that simple. Michigan is a gallicised version of an Ojibwe word. It came to be written down that way by French speakers.

Odd this thread should be bounced in the same week I saw a documentary which was filmed in Michigan and I realised I'd been staying it wrong my whole life. However I've worked in travel for 25 years and can count on one hand how many Americans have correctly pronounced Edinburgh so it goes both ways.

While not disputing the correct pronunciation of Michigan , CH is produced differently in European languages and in several ways in English - think of the ch in church and now say Michigan and you can see where how a t sound might be heard. This Mitchigan pronunciation may then have become more normalised in groups where this pronunciation of ch was more used, where the native pronunciation was not heard / only seen in writing . For example in the European families of emigrants where they may have seen the word in writing but never heard it spoken.

Hmmm I have been saying wrong for 40+ years and I have been to Lake Michigan too. Noted.

This!

Haha - what about Americans trying to say Gloucestershire or Worcestershire. Or anyone who isn't Welsh trying to pronounced welsh names. As for how to pronounce Irish names I'm out.

I'd say Mishigan though - I watch lots of TV. No idea Maryland was pronounced Murlan 🧐

Oops - always thought it was Mitch.