How do you say that?

I was reading Resident Alien's blog and was reminded of regional dialects. I like hearing different inflections, and often they are impossible to copy. I remember one time I went on a trip to the south and kept botching the name "Mobile."

"No," my friend said. "It's Mo-beel"
"Right, okay. Mobile," I said.
"No, Mobeel."

I thought I was saying the same thing, but obviously I couldn't put the emphasis on the right part of the name. Mobile quickly became that "lovely place where there are gardens, trains and a bay."

Another time, while in the confines of that lunatic asylum (UCLA Writers'Program), I wrote a story about an old woman named Eurydice. It takes place in the country, along a river where there are farms. I pronounced it as they do: 'Yur-eh-dees."

So this woman in the class goes, "Oh, ha ha. It's Yur-eh-di-see."
"Yeah, I know," I said.
But she made a big damned flap about it every time for the next few weeks whenever I bring in a scene with Eurydice. She also made it clear to everyone that she's an English teacher at a posh private school, where she teaches super rich kids, and hey --she's paid to know things like that. In other words, she's no hick. She's the type who'd go to Mobile and try to force them to say it the way she does. She'd probably also correct someone who said, "beyotch." I figure people like that either haven't traveled or read much out of their comfort zone. Which for her, meant she'd never been east of the 110 Freeway.

I come in another week, read another scene. Eurydice has died, and a congressman comes to pay tribute to her at a dedication of a nature center. He botches her name. The crowd turns to him and shouts, "Yur-eh-dees." "He's not from around here," someone says. Long live regionalism.

Now ironically, this same lady who got down on me for using the 'incorrect' pronunciation could never pronounce my name. She botched it every single week, when everyone else had gotten it. It was passive aggressive on her part.
It was pretty weird. Before class, she'd say,
"So Kaneeenee, what are you reading these days?"
I should have said, "Oh, I just got the new MAD magazine!"
Instead I just shot mental bullets at her, which was pretty damned unsophisticated. I may have been raised in hicksville, but we had manners.

In case you're wondering:
"kah-nah-nee"
Or, if you prefer (and so much easier): "Your Highness," will do.