> > I never think to correct an American's pronunciation of > Spanish; since > > my childhood, I've generally discovered that it's a lost cause . . . > > While I agree with Joses note as a whole, I do want to point > out that populations tend to grab foreign place names and > make them their own. Not directly related, but I live in Arkansas (ArkanSAW). My roommate in college was from Kansas (KanSAS), and he consistently referred to the river that flows through my state as the ArkanSAS River. He also referred to my state as ArkanSAS but I'm pretty sure that much at least was a joke. Both of us were native English speakers who lived within a few hundred miles of each other, and we still couldn't agree on the pronunciation. Bryan