by It’s a Southern Thing is one of my favorite humor sites. They have been running a series on the correct pronunciation of towns in various southern states. They have arrived at North Carolina and the results are funny.
As a native North Carolinian and life-long resident, I should note that some of these are hard even for us. I did OK on the western and Piedmont names but got a bit lost on some of the coastal NC names. I had 11 correct and four wrong which is probably because I grew up in the Piedmont and moved to the mountains in my 20s.
I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t include some more Cherokee names like Lake Junaluska or the name of my favorite NC town which is Whynot.
North Carolina may have the largest concentration of words pronounced differently from how they are spelled outside the UK, but other states have, if not their share, a modest number. New Madrid, MO, Cairo, IL, Del Norte County, California and the main thoroughfare in Los Angeles, Sepulveda Blvd.
New MAD'rid, CAY'ro, Del NORT, and Se PUL' ve da, so you can sound like a native.
As Tam from "View from the porch" said, English doesn't borrow words from other languages, it coshes them in a dark alley and rifles through the pockets to take any half-way useful words. Proper pronunciation be damned.