pronunciation

The sad truth is many of us have been mispronouncing Illinois for years.

Just try to pronounce this hardest-to-pronounce Illinois place and you'll wish there were some additional vowels in its 5-letter name.

My career has involved speaking for more than 40 years so you'd think I'd be good at saying things by now. Not so much and that's especially true of the Illinois town that was just declared one of the hardest to pronounce in the United States.

There are rebels in our midst that are saying what should be an obvious word incorrectly. It's such a problem that the speech experts have issued a warning to everyone that has managed to say "Illinois" incorrectly.

There is one Missouri town that has been hit by a double whammy. It's known as being one of the most mispronounced cities in America and it was also slammed into by a mammoth meteor. Can this Missouri place catch a break?

To be fair, as I look at the words that other states seem to have plenty of difficulty spelling, we here in Illinois can take pride in the fact that we can spell the country's most misspelled word better than 12 other states.