If there’s one thing all Oregonians have in common, it’s getting annoyed, irked and generally bent out of shape when a visitor, relative, friend or member of the national media mispronounces the state’s name, or the name of a city here.

For some reason it makes us cringe even though some of us have been there ourselves. So because people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, let me just admit up front the whopper of a mispronunciation I committed.

It’s a doozy, I’m not proud of it, and this is my public apology.

About 20 years ago, I made the mistake of saying out loud (or trying to) the name of an area resort that, in my defense, I’d only ever seen in written form, probably in The Bulletin and definitely on signs as I drove through Warm Springs.

At the time, I’d been living in Bend about three years, just long enough to think I knew the lay of the land. Sure, I knew how some area places were supposed to be said, enough so that I may have laughed out loud when my father-in-law, may he rest in peace, pronounced Madras, “muh-DROSS,” like “Oh, no! I got mustard on muh dross!” The automated voice that used to provide audio versions of Bulletin articles also committed that sin, although the current robot reader seems to have gotten the memo.

My mistake occurred over a place slightly to the north of Madras: Kah-Nee-Ta Hot Springs Resort in Warm Springs, which by the way, is slated for a summer reopening. I have no idea what I was talking about — rare are the times I can, even in the present — but I mentioned to them Kah-Nee-Ta.

Please note, Kah-Nee-Ta has hyphens in it. For a certain kind of twit raised on phonics, those hyphens make — made! — it very tempting to sound it out in a very syllabic way. You can maybe guess where I’m going with this.

Yes, the way I mortifyingly said it directly to my colleagues was “KAH. KNEE. TAH,” with slight pauses and everything. Besides the hyphens, I’m sure way too many Hollywood depictions of Native Americans throughout my youth also contributed to the slander.

Sorry. My bad. Now, please, let us never speak of this again.

Boy did Andrew and Heidi laugh at me though. I mustered a measly defense you can also probably guess: “It has those hyphens! I’ve never heard it said out loud!”

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My protestations did no good. Sometimes you just have to take your lumps, even though it feels way better to laugh with than to be laughed at, which is why, 20 years later, it still sort of smarts.

But I don’t blame them one bit for laughing. It would’ve been funny to me, too, had I just one time — just once, really, is that too much to ask? — heard anyone say it out loud in front of me.

Once you know how a word is pronounced, it seems obvious — and commensurately ridiculous — when you hear someone say it wrong.

So, tourists, newcomers, distant friends and family and national media, I can relate, yet I still cringe like the rest of Oregon when I hear you say things like “Ore-GONE,” or “YOO-gene” instead of “you-GENE.” Could you imagine being a Eugene from Eugene? Surely there must be one.

Sometimes people stick to their guns with their wrong way of saying things, which is always entertaining, like the conversation I had a while back with a person who kept pronouncing Tumalo “Too-MAH-lo,” as though it semi-rhymed with the last word in “The sun will come out tomorrow.”

My mom used to call me a smart aleck until I graduated to smart –s, but I’ve been married to a nice person long enough that I usually won’t correct a stranger or acquaintance on a mispronounced word. But I will say it back to them correctly to see if they catch on.

Most of the time, people do not catch on. The person would not take the hint, and just kept saying Too-MAH-lo, and it got increasingly awkward, like the time a former colleague never got my oldest daughter’s name right. Every time I’d say “Caroline” with a long “i,” she’d say Carolyn back to me, as though she trusted her way of saying it more than mine.

I swear, all people stand to be corrected some of the time, but not all people can stand to be corrected any of the time.

Speaking of Caroline, she lives in Portland now, where she reports frequently hearing people mispronounce the name of our home county and the river that runs through it as “Dess-chutes.” You’d think the affected people of the town that spawned “Portlandia” would revel in the French origin of the word, but you’d be faux.

Despite their own inability to pronounce names in our area, Portlanders seem pretty particular about how to say things in their neck of the woods. I only recently learned that the city’s Couch Street is pronounced “Kooch.”

I wanted to believe that there’s a rational explanation, such as a middle-schooler came up with it and there is: John Heard Couch, a founder of Portland.

Many a word has been written, and at least a few TikToks and Reels made, discussing common mispronunciations in the area.

I will side with you on one thing, you visitors, interlopers, media, and whoever else is perplexed by the way we say Willamette. “Will-a-met” is winsome and melodious compared to “Wil-LAM-et.” I know people like to say “Willamette, dammit” but personally, that just calls to mind my parents’ old college friend Art, who was forever in a recliner yelling “Dammit!” at his kids in his very loud and impatient way.

In short, there’s no way to get things right all the time (just ask Art’s kids), but when in doubt, try to find how something is pronounced before you embarrass yourself. How do you ask without saying it out loud? I suggest writing it down.

I also suggest not getting too stressed about any of this. If you do, though, just head to the nearest resort for some relaxation, whether or not you can pronounce its name.

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