[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“hansioux”]Houston <-- not pronounced OW as in House, but not really pronounced as OO either, well, some people say it like h-oo-s-ton… must most say h-ew-s-ton.
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But for some reason, the major NYC street of this name is pronounced OW.
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Legend has it that’s how the man it’s named after, William Houston, pronounced his name.
‘You’ ends in ‘ou’ and sounds like /ju/. ‘Y’ represents the /j/ sound, and ‘ou’ represents the /u/ sound. Therefore, ‘ou’ at the end of at least one word sounds like /u/. And therefore, it can sound like /u/. QED.
“manitou” is sometimes pronounced “man-i-too”, sometimes “man-i-toe” (“toe” like on your foot).
Origin:
1605–15; < Unami Delaware monə́t·u, reinforced by or reborrowed from Ojibwa manito· and other cognates (all < Proto-Algonquian *maneto·wa ); spelling influenced by equivalent French word