How Home-State Pronunciations Can Shape Elections
Woe to the politician who, while campaigning in a particular state, pronounces the state’s name differently from the local denizens.
The latest casualty of this phonetic parochialism is Matt Rosendale, currently the frontrunner among Montana Republicans seeking to oppose the incumbent Jon Tester in this year’s U.S. Senate race. Democrats have already set their sights on Rosendale by issuing an online ad that plays up the fact that he moved to Montana from Maryland some fifteen years ago. His accent, the ad suggests, is proof that Rosendale—dubbed “Maryland Matt” by the Democrats—is an interloper who doesn’t share “Montana values.”
While Rosendale’s accent is indeed distinctly non-Montanan, the ad from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, there’s something peculiar about how he pronounces the vowel in the second syllable of “Montana.” (More on that in a bit.)
