American pronunciation

[sigma]

Following on from the American pronunciation of Herbs, they seem to use phonetics in their pronunciation, eg. derby not darby and wore sester shire instead of wuster.
Why then do they not pronounce Arkansas as are cans ass instead of are can saw ?.

[andy-hughes]

Because language is a living changing concept which doesn't apply rules in some areas, but does in others.

As long as the human race has input into its langauges, there will never be hard and fast rules - people will simply adopt what suite them - which is the way it has always been.

[Quizmonster]

As Andy says above and - as regards the pronunciation of Arkansas specifically -
"The spelling of the term represents a French plural, Arcansas, of a name applied to the Quapaw people who lived on the Arkansas River; their name was also written in early times as Akancea, Acansea, Acansa (Dickinson, 1995). This was not the name used by the Quapaws themselves, however. The term /akansa/ was applied to them by Algonquian speakers; this consists of /a-/, an Algonquian prefix found in the names of ethnic groups, plus /kk�:ze, a Siouan term refering to members of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan family. This stem is also the origin for the name of the Kansa tribe and of the state of Kansas; thus the placenames Arkansas and Kansas indirectly have the same origin." [William Bright, "Native American Placenames of the United States," 2004]

So, the sounding of the word is a combination of French and Native American language influences. After all, Americans do not pronounce everything phonetically!

[fredpuli47]

Arkansas was the 'territory of Arkansaw' in 1819.In 1836 it became the state of Arkansas.Ignorant of history , some people pronounced the name as Ar-kan-sass.It was being spelt as Arkansas but pronounced as what seemed to English speakers as Ar-kan-saw because Arkansas was a French attempt at putting a local name into French spelling, to be pronounced by someone French .French settlers had arrived long before English-speaking ones.

In 1881 , to resolve the difficulty when the people themselves had differing pronunciations, the state legislature passed a resolution that the pronunciation received from the natives by the French and which was written as representing the French sound was to be the official pronunciation.The resolution went on to explain this in some detail, but the result is that it's pronounced like 'Ar-Kan-saw today [strictly Ar-kan-sah would be closer to French, but that's pronunciation for you !]

Nobody in America passed any law about Derby, so their natives took to saying as they saw, without reference to how the natives of England pronounced it.

[sigma]

Thanks every one. Never thought the answers would be so interesting.