How do you pronounce Antigua?
 

I'm having a disagreement with someone regarding the way one pronounces the name of this island! Which is right:

An-TE-gwa
OR
An-tee-ga?

Thanks for your help!!

An-tee-ga is how they say it there.

Thanks Peg! You just won me $5!

Yes, to locals it's ANN-TEE-GAH

An-tee-ga

Yeah. It's only the geniuses at the Travel Channel who say Antee-gwa.

The Travel Channel is to accurate travel information what Geraldo Rivera is to the news industry.

Ann-tee-gah

So who votes for ann-GWILL-uh over ann-GWEE-luh?

I say UNH-GWEE-LAH

It's An-gwil-uh.

Sorry "statia" ,definitely GWEE - NOT gwil - ANH-GWEE-LAH

An gwil ah. At least according to someone who lives there I once spoke with.

Sorry me, it's gwill!
Ronnie

When I was there, all the people who live on the island said ann-gwill-uh.

Me,

I live less than 40 miles away and every time I'm there, all the locals pronounce it An-gwil-uh. All of us the surrounding islands pronounce it the same, as well. Where is Sandyfeet? She can settle this.

I lived in Anguilla and absolutely no one pronounces it with the French "oui" sound. It's an-GWILL-ah plain and simple. Don't know where "me" got her info but it's erroneous.

I thought this post was about Antigua?? How did it turn into Anguilla?

The Anguillian Government actually publishes a brochure that says "RHYMES WITH VANILLA" -- that ought to end all debate.

Not a carribean expert by any stretch, but I found this site useful:

http://gocaribbean.about.com/library...y/aa041499.htm

Learned a few things like how to pronounce Curacao.

Cur-uh-sow. Thanks, Bluefan. Now, let's pronounce ALL the islands! ha.

You say toe-may-toe, and I say toe-mah-toe... traa laa laaaaa. ((8))
Any-hoo, I still cringe with embarassment when I think of the first Caribbean trip I took many years ago and asked the travel agent about St. Loo-chee-uh. Yipes!
I think one I hear pronounced incorrectly most often is Dominica.

If "keygal" who lives in Anguilla said it's pronounced anGWILah - then sure- I believe her.Where did I get the "GWEE" from?-Correct me if I'm wrong but I remembered something about that "Anguilla" was a given name to the island by the early Spanish explorers ,they changed it from "Malliouhana(?)".So if Anguilla is a Spanish word ,I thought that how it's pronounced -"anngweelah".
I vote for CURE-A-SOW

Actually, Me, Curacao is the seat of our government here in the Dutch Antilles....it's cur-uh-sow.

However, I think that a lot of people DO pronounce it cure-uh-sow...at least a lot of those I know in the States. So, you've probably heard it pronounced that way often.

Does anyone really give a shit

Clarification on Curacao. In your phonetic spellings, are you using the "sow" of cur-uh-sow to be pronounced "sow" like a female pig or "sow" like sowing grain? I hear it both ways about equally and would like to pronounce it correctly. Thanks!

Sorry..."sow," like a female pig.

Thanks, Statia. I have to say that reading over these posts has made me grin quite a bit!

The way I was told to remember how to pronounce Anguilla was to think of 'vanilla'...they rhyme.

When I was growing up in the 1950's and 60's, my father traveled quite a few times a year to the Caribbean islands on business, and he always pronounced Antigua as an-tee-gwa, and Anguilla as an-gee-ya, as he had learned. This may have changed since then.

This thread is TEN years old and the people who live in Antigua still pronounce it An-tee-gah!