MAINE STATE - If you head "Down East" in Maine, you will encounter a dialect that is unique to the pine-covered coast. Between the dropped "R"s and the fast-paced cadence, visitors often struggle to keep up. But nothing marks a tourist faster than mispronouncing the names on the highway signs.
While Bangor gets all the attention (remember: it rhymes with "clanger," not "bang-gore"), the true champion of mispronunciation is a border city that sits right across the river from Canada.
The Winner: Calais, Maine
You see the sign and you think of France. You think of the ferry port across the English Channel. You say Cah-LAY. And immediately, every Mainer within earshot shakes their head.
How to Pronounce It: KAL-iss
It rhymes with "palace," "callous," or "Alice." The "s" is hard and fully pronounced.
Why Is It Pronounced That Way? The town was indeed named after Calais, France, in 1809, as a nod to French assistance during the American Revolution. However, like many New England towns named after European capitals (see: Berlin, NH or Vienna, ME), the pronunciation was aggressively Anglicized over the 19th century. In the local vernacular, the French silence of the final "s" was abandoned for a strictly phonetic English reading.
Honorable Mentions If you get Calais right, don't get cocky. Maine has plenty more traps:
- Bangor: The most famous dispute. It is Bang-or (one syllable slurred into two), absolutely never Bang-GORE.
- Saco: It looks like it could be "Say-co," but it is firmly Sock-o.
- Woolwich: Don't pronounce the "w" in the middle. It’s Wool-ich.
- Isle au Haut: A French leftover pronounced Eye-la-HO.
