A Car-NAY-Gee Library

As part of my Library's 100th anniversary bigbash this year, Scowl-Face is continuing his long-winded, albeit informative, series of blog postings. His two most recent bring us up to speed on several critical library developments from a century ago--namely,

• How the Carnegie grant played out; and
• What was included inside (and out) at the "new" library.

That's pronounced Car-NAY-Gee, for those playing along at home.  When I was a kitten, I heard Andy's name pronounced CAR-Nuh-Gee, like the late sports anchor on WRTV-Channel 6 in Indianapolis.  Only his first name was Tom, and he was a terrific dude (quite funny on the studio set).  I met him there back in the 1980s (in one of my previous nine lives) when I was a featured cat on the noon broadcast's shelter adoption segment.  (I was adopted shortly after appearing on camera.  It was an excellent feature on the extended newscast.)

Anyway, whenever anybody talked about Andrew Carnegie, one of the founding foursome of United States Steel Corporation, his surname was pronounced like Tom's surname.  Was this like Versailles, Indiana, being pronounced Ver-SALES, instead of Ver-SIGH, like we French say it?  Or Russiaville, Indiana, is pronounced ROOSH-ee-vill by Hoosiers instead of the obviously-spelled RUSH-a-vill (i.e., like the country Russia plus ville)?  Do Indiana folks just talk funny?  President WARSH-ing-ton?  Do a load of laundry, like, WARSH it and dry it?  The White Lick CRICK?  By that peculiar pronunciation, I suppose the scientists who confirmed that DNA was a double helix were Watson and CREEK.

Hey, it's okay for moi to joke about Hoosier dialects.  I'm born-and-raised an Indiana feline, so I have permission to kid around.  It's my birthright.

What was I writing about again?  Oh, yeah, Scowl-Face's blog.  If you enjoy being buried with factoids, it's surely your tin of tuna.

Seriously, the Blog's Worth a Look-See,

Cauli Le Chat

MPL Roving Reporter

Library Anniversary News Beat

P.S.  Fast-forward this ten-minute audio clip to the 8:22 mark and listen through 8:55, and you'll hear Andrew Carnegie's voice captured on a Thomas Alva Edison recording cylinder.  This is an interesting collection of famous 19th and early 20th century voices.  I was surprised how some of the people sounded.  Did anyone's voice surprise you?  Comments, please and thanks.