User talk:38.116.28.20

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[edit] Hurricane, West Virginia

Thanks for your note about the pronunciation of "Hurricane". I reverted your changes for a couple of reasons:

  1. You edits were POV. You said "more properly pronounced as..." which is an opinion, not a reporting of fact. If it had merely said that there were differing pronunciations without making a judgement call, I probably would have left it.
  2. You didn't provide a source. While it's true that the original statement was also unsourced, Wikipedia tends toward the status quo on these things. If you can't replace an unsourced statement with a sourced one and the original statement is verifiable, the original statement should be left as is (or a source should be added). I tried to find a source, but was not able to do so.
  3. In my experience, which admittedly doesn't include living in Hurricane, everyone I talked to in the town (mostly my relatives) pronounced it "colloquially", not "standard". My relatives are from St. Albans, but I think they're local enough to be representative. It was definitely way more than 15% of the people I met.

I would be fine with changing the article to say that both pronunciations are used as long as it doesn't give preference to one or the other without reference to a reliable source. For what it's worth, this pronunciation is mentioned in the Shibboleth article, but the statement is unsourced there as well. It is also notable that the "colloquial" pronunciation is the same as the standard British pronunciation, so it is possibly a holdover from the time of the town's founding in the late 18th century.

Hope that helps. Mike Dillon 20:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

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