Not sure how to pronounce Cohoctah or Kitch-iti-kipi, Ypsilanti or Wequetonsing? Did you know that the community of Presque Isle is pronounced differently than Presque Isle County?
The State of Michigan has come to the rescue.
The Michigan Braille and Talking Book Library has developed a new guide, "You Say It How in Michigan?" that offers the correct pronunciation for more than 2,200 Michigan cities and other locales. The names of celebrities are sprinkled throughout the list, some of them with Michigan connections.
The guide was developed primarily to help producers of audio books for blind and visually impaired people, but has been released for public use, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, or LARA, announced today.
You can find it at www.michigan.gov/howtosayit or on the Braille and Talking Book Library website at www.michigan.gov/btbl.
By the way, Cohoctah is a rural community in northwest Livingtston County, Kitch-iti-kipi is Michigan's largest fresh water spring and is also known as the Big Spring. It can found at Palms Book State Park in Manistique in the Upper Peninsula. Ypsilanti is a city in Washtenaw County, and Wequetonsing is a resort community on Little Traverse Bay in Northern Michigan.
But you'll have to go to the guide for help pronouncing those places.
The state's Braille and Talking Book Library is a division of the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons, a part of LARA. Its recording studio records books and magazines of Michigan and Great Lakes interest, and books by Michigan authors.
William Robinson, the bureau's director, said the pronunciation guide is "a perfect example of an innovative outreach that illustrates the creativity of the library team. I have used the guide myself, and it is a great resource."
