My mother's boss teaches high school and did not know Newark is in New Jersey. Now, to be fair, I'm watching Brick City right now AIFG, and I'm a Philip Roth fan besides so I know about it, for never being there. But that's pretty dumb, is it not? I think she bought her diploma on the interwebs.

When my Mom, who grew up in Florida, went to college in Missouri and had never heard of Newark. She'd hear people from the north east saying "Newark" and thought that was just how they pronounced "New York".

Dude, I know I'm not William Goldman. I like my script, but it's not, like, a loss to the form that you had to wait. If you're going to be a while about though, maybe I should send you a Celtx PDF because you won't have to put up with my icky typing. R. is constantly asking my mother things that make me wonder if she can read in English...I guess that might not be one, though. It can be hard to tell.

There's also a Newark, Delaware, but they pronounce it the way it's spelled, not "Nerk".

Newark is pronounced the way it's spelled!

Just very quickly.

Newark NJ is NEW-erk. Newark DE is New-Ark. I've heard Newark NJ get slurred to something like NEW-uck or NEW-ick, but never Nerk.

Snerk.

Hil, I rode trains in and out of that station for years. Believe me, it's closer to Nerk than New-erk.

There's a reason it's sometimes called Down Neck.

in Texas near where I grew up there was a Newark pronounced NEW-ARK.

Hil, I rode trains in and out of that station for years. Believe me, it's closer to Nerk than New-erk.

Nerk sounds really weird to me -- I'm trying to think of all the ways that seem like a way I've heard, and all of them have the oo sound in there somewhere.

I tried googling Newark and Nerk to see what I got, and just about every reference to pronouncing it Nerk is for the one in Ohio.

Well, I grew up twenty miles from there and rode in and out of that station for years, Hil, and the way I heard it always had very little, if any, "oo" sound. Not that it really matters.