How to speak like a New Yorker I

Today I begin an absolutely irregular series of posts entitled "How to speak like a New Yorker." These posts will have nothing to do with the stereotypical Noo Yawk accent, i.e. the New York dialect you might associate with Robert De Niro or, um, Fran Drescher. In fact, the majority of NYC's population does not have that accent, and many New York residents have speech patterns that correspond to English speakers from other continents (and by "In fact" I mean "I'm just guessing").

The truth is that tourists to the Big Apple give themselves away immediately by mispronouncing place names, or being unfamiliar with the basics of the subway system, or not knowing the difference between a street and an avenue. I'm not an expert in all things New York, by any means, but I have lived here long enough to be mildly annoyed when someone mispronounces the street I live on. This series is an attempt to help the uninitiated visitor avoid similar bloopers.

First in the series: Houston Street. Commonly mispronounced as "HYOO-stin," after the largest city in Texas, it is actually pronounced "HOW-stin." I hear this error all the time because I live about 50 yards from Houston Street, which happens to be a fairly long and well-known thoroughfare in Manhattan. You can read more information about it here.