Now try this one: Alki*

One of the towns we drove through on our Olympic Peninsula trip is named Sequim, and this gives me an opportunity to comment on an aspect of newcomer life I haven't really commented on here before: the process of learning the idiosyncratic pronunciations of various geographic names in this state. It's often really hard to figure out how to pronounce a place name from the way it's spelled.

There are the relatively easy ones, like Wenatchee, which is just a matter of knowing which syllable to stress and which you have a one in three chance of getting right if you guess. (It's "weh-NAT-chee.")

Then there are the ones like Tulalip (too-LAY-lip), which require you to figure out both the stress and how to pronounce one of the vowels (in this case the "a").

Puyallup is one I'm still trying to make roll off my tongue. It's another level of difficulty. There are so many possible ways you could pronounce it that it jams your language brain up. (Turns out it's "pyoo-AL-up.")

Then there are the local peculiarities, like the fact that you just have to know that the "s" in "Moines" is pronounced in "Des Moines" (but not the "s" in "Des," which is silent). And "Leschi," which if you know how to speak Italian you will tend to want to pronounce as "LESS-key" but is locally pronounced as "LESH-eye."

But my favorite disconnect between spelling and pronunciation is Sequim. David, quite reasonably, thought it was prounounced "SEE-quim," like "sequin" with an "m" at the end. I, conditioned by decades of living with Spanish place names, heard it in my head as "seh-KEEM." But it is neither of those. Do you know what it is? You'll never guess. It's "squim," like "squid" with an "m" at the end. It's enough to give a person a complex.

It just occurred to me that it's a good thing I don't have any native Washingtonian readers (since I know the only people who read this blog are Linda in San Francisco and my immediate family in Southern California). If I did, they'd be rolling their eyes at all my whining. "Deal with it," they'd say. "Damn Californian."

*Answer: It's "AL-kye" (rhymes with "pie"), and it's the beach that runs along the north edge of West Seattle. Don't say you're looking for "AL-key" or someone will direct you to certain blocks of downtown.