NO ‘SOY’ IN OSOYOOS
Posted on 11 August 2009 by admin
So, how do you pronounce the name of our town?
OSOYOOS TIMES-August 12, 2009
By Laurena Weninger - Osoyoos Times
I say “tomato,” you say “tomatto,” but if Mayor Stu Wells is within earshot, you better watch your mouth when you say “Osoyoos.”
“I want to get t-shirts that state, ‘There is no SOY in O-soo-yuss,’” Wells said, explaining that the pronunciation of the town’s name seems to have taken on a few new varieties over the years.
“The name of the town is ‘O-soo-yuss,’” Wells said.
A letter to Wells from a Kamloops resident named David Sallows recently brought the friendly debate to the forefront.
Sallows, a former Osoyoos resident, said he graduated from South Okanagan High School in 1961.
“In those days, and in the days of my grandparents (Iverson), the town of Osoyoos was pronounced as ‘O-soo-yuss,’” he stated. “Sometime in the 1980s or ‘90s the pronunciation seemed to shift to ‘O-so-yoos.’”
Sallows said he believes the change in pronunciation is directly attributable to the news media, particularly that of television.
“It bothers me that the pronunciation of a town’s name can be changed so readily in one’s lifetime.”
It bothers Wells, too.
“We have all these varieties,” he said.
A quick trip to the beach and the streets of the town highlights some of the possibilities.
“Uh-soo-yuss,” said Anniessa Frampton, 11, who is visiting her grandma.
“Oh-soo-yuss,” said Elaine Derksen, who lives in the town.
“Uh-soo-yuss,” said Pam Davis, from the Pharmasave on 78th Avenue.
Davis has lived in Osoyoos for more than four years and said the conversation has come up a time or two around the store.
The debate continues.
“The ‘soo’ part is important… but other people have told me it doesn’t matter,” Davis said. “On the phone, you have to spell it.”
Bob Etienne is an interpreter from the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre and he weighs in with an opinion, too.
“Most of the towns in the valley are derived from our native language,” he said.
The language is called “nsilxcim’ and is pronounced “skeltchen.”
It’s more commonly called “Okanagan.”
In the 1800s, the town now named “Osoyoos” was an important junction.
“It was kind of a mining camp, when the people were coming up the Cariboo trail,” Etienne explained. “When they got this far, it was a main stop. We had a good run of travellers, east and west, north and south.”
But for many years before that, the Okanagan people called the area Sooyoos.
That word refers to the narrowing of a body of water or the place where two bodies of water come together.
The native word was changed with an “O” added at the beginning.
“People used this because they couldn’t pronounce our language,” Etienne said.
Now, the most common variations on the pronunciation seem to be “O-so-yuss” and “Uh-soo-yuss.”
Those ones aren’t so hard for Wells to accept – just be careful not to stumble on the one that gets his ire up.
“The one that drives me crazy is ‘O-soy-yuss,’” he said. “I do want to make those shirts.”
reporter@osoyoostimes.com
I agree with the mayor completely.Having grown up in the area,this is something that has annoyed me for years. It used to be only the odd out of province tourist, that would add the “soy”, but now seems to be the media’s choice.
I will still say O-soy-yuss cause that’s how it comes out.
O-soy-yuss!
Good on you Mayor….it is about time it is corrected. I reside in Calgary, but my home is Osoyoos and has been for three generations of my family…and it irritates me when the media and others here mispronouce it, I am constantly correcting them. Some do say “whatever”, but it is not…I say it is like mispronoucing a person name…once corrected you should make the effort to remedy the error - it is just the polite thing to do.
You are fighting a losing battle, “Whatever”.
The Mayor needs to write to media and to Victoria, first to the media everytime they mispronounce it, and second to Victoria to add an extra “O” to Osoyoos so that it is spelled “Osooyoos”.
Since the media is controlling how Osoyoos is spelled, it’s up to the Mayor to pressure the media to pronounce Osoyoos as “Uh-sue-use” rather than “Ah-soy’~yoss”.
Change the spelling to reflect the pronunciation so that there is little chance of misspeak..
I grew up in O-sue-yes… and HATE it when I hear
O-soy-s…
I remember learning how to spell it with the Cheer from Osoyoos School - which only went to grade 9 then..
O, S, O, Y OO S — along with hand signals of some kind –
I live in Ontario and had heard about Canada’s only desert. Plan to visit your beautiful town in the near future. I was calling the town “O Soy Use”. Thank you for correcting the pronunciation. I will now say “O Soo Use”. Hope I am now right!
Our family has visited your beautiful town a number of times over the past 8 years since we left the province.
I was not aware of the origins of the name “the narrowing of a body of water or the place where two bodies of water come together” or that the region/junction played such an important and historical role in the towns early development.
To me, the simple solution is to honor the native “nsilxcim’ language by renaming the town Sooyoos.
This would not only solve the pronunciation issue but further the towns efforts to preserve its unique culture, protect the desert environment, enhance the historic downtown, encourage citizenship, and, in general, foster a healthier quality of life creating a “sense of place”.
I think it is great that Osoyoos even makes it to the media. It is great publicity for our lovely town. I spent my entire childhood in Osoyoos and now reside in Kamloops. I think there are far more important things that the town’s Mayor should be focusing on than how the media pronounces “Osoyoos”. I highly doubt that we are going to change the spelling and do you blame outsiders for mispronouncing. I am pretty sure when I was brought up in school we were taught to read by sounding out the word. That is all people are doing.
Having grown up in Osoyoos, and working in the tourist industry I was asked this questions many times - i always answered that the correctly pronunciation is Oh-Sue-Yes…
They always say they’ll never get it ….
What a silly argument! You can’t expect newcomers or visitors to pronounce the town’s name any differently than the way it is spelled.
Look at the name of the German city of Munich, for example. The common pronunciation by English speakers is “MUNE-ick”, but judging from the spelling, a phonetic pronunciation would be more like “MUNN-itch”.
Wrong again! The German spelling is actually München, so only speakers of German can pronounce the city’s name correctly.
Greetings from O, Liver!
While it may be disconcerting to some native residents of Osoyoos to see the pronunciation of this town change over the years, it is not uncommon at all for this to happen. Linguistics would point out that language, unlike say mathematics, is not static, but dynamic. That means it morphs over time. I doubt most 21st century English speakers would be able to read Chaucer’s thirteenth century English; and some even have considerable difficulty with Shakespeare. These are rather glaring examples which are admittedly hundreds of years old, but they do demonstrate the changes which take place in a language over the years. The dynamic nature of language has perhaps been accelerated over the years, but it is a fact of the 21st century. My advice would be to take it with a little more levity. . .it’s not after all a matter of principle at question, so lighten up about it and enjoy the place you love so much without getting too rankled about how people pronounce Osoyoos.
Solution? I see 2 choices - stop & educate all entrants at the city gates with the correct pronunciation (perhaps issuing the aforementioned T-shirts??)
or
change the name to better reflect town’s origins and pronunciation!
A name spelled osoyoos will inevitably lead to soy, sorry. Either Osooyoos or Sooyoos will solve this matter - how about it mayor?? You realise there would be no issue at all with pronunciation by correcting the spelling?