L-I-R-R vs. Lurr.

Andrew Keh reports in the NY Times (archived) about a divergence in pronunciation that astounds me as much as if you told me a lot of people pronounced New York “NYE-rock”: New Yorkers, among other neuroses, can be particular about the local vernacular. You wait on line, not in line. The subway goes uptown or downtown, not north or south. And “the city” never, ever refers to the whole city — just Manhattan. But for some reason, no matter how many times they’ve ridden the Long Island Rail Road out to Jones Beach or back and forth between Midtown and Ronkonkoma, New Yorkers can’t agree on how to pronounce it. The evidence has been on everyone’s lips since about 3,500 L.I.R.R. workers went on strike on Saturday. “There are a lot of things to debate and to discuss right now,” said Shekar Krishnan, a City Council member representing parts of Queens, including Woodside, Jackson Heights and Elmhurst. “But there’s one thing that’s not debatable: We say Lurr.” Try telling that to Kieran…