They tried to teach us that is school. It failed so, SOOO hard. Not even I could grasp it. It's like it's a whole different language. I still can't read it. It's like reading something legible then plopping down a native Greek word in it. In Greek spelling

I always go by the pronunciation of the locals who live there. It's their home, they say it's name more than anyone else, they get the right to determine what is the correct pronunciation.

I grew up in a town called Lebanon. We could always tell out-of-towners because they pronounced it like it is spelled, like the middle eastern country - Leb-uh-non. We locals pronounced it Leb-nun.

And Englishmen visiting New England can take their red-coat wearing asses back across the pond and complain about their own citizens pronouncing names of English cities nothing like how they are spelled. :slap: Let's face it, English is so hodge-podged together with pronunciation and grammar rules and exceptions and everything else that the true pronunciation of a lot of words owes nothing to the spelling of the word.

I though nevada was pronounced hell-hole

jk

I live in Vegas, it's pronounced ne-va-da.
also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmUf9FDUOTk&feature=player_embedded#!
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I'm Spanish. In the USA you've got plenty of names written in my language due to our ancestors colonizing those lands for the first time. San Francisco, Los ángeles, El álamo, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, among other hundreds... Nevada means "Snowed" (feminine form) and, as a Spanish word, it is pronounced Ne-VA-da. And that "e" is like you would say in the word "to sEnd", and both "a" would be like you would say in "fAther"... well, anyway, I'm not good at "writing how you'd pronounce things for an English-speaker", so look at this: http://es.forvo.com/word/nevada

Now, the thing is, after a couple of centuries of English-speakers populating the USA, it's normal that words get "adapted" to the new language... Check Los ángeles, for instance, and get the difference!: http://es.forvo.com/word/los_angeles

@princess_stomper

NO, not gran-AH-da, but gra-NA-da (the "n" belongs to the second syllable, and again, all the "a" are identical). Check it here, the one pronounced by AleOzzY (in the map it's over Chile, the one over Spain is Portuguese): http://www.forvo.com/word/granada

Keep it simple, people. In Spanish we only have five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, and they are pronounced the same. Always