"Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings dragged for mispronouncing this Canadian town (VIDEO)
Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings is in hot water after he pronounced the name of a Nova Scotia town wrong.
Twitter user @Roscopcoletrain managed to capture the mispronunciation on video and posted it to the social media platform.
“Oh wow that Antigonish pronunciation,” he tweeted.
Anneteagonish pic.twitter.com/cbDvIlJFa9
— Scott (@Roscopcoletrain) January 17, 2023
In the video, Jennings reads the following clue from the “Small town America and Canada” category:
“For more than 150 years, traditional festivities have come to Antigonish in this province for the annual highland games.”
Antigonish — a small town in Nova Scotia 160 km northeast of the province’s capital Halifax — is in fact home to the oldest continuous highland games outside of Scotland.
While the trivia was true, Nova Scotians took points away from the host for his mispronunciation.
“Somebody on @Jeopardy please tell Ken Jennings that Antigonish is pronounced AntigoNISH and not AntiGONish,” tweeted one person.
Somebody on @Jeopardy please tell Ken Jennings that Antigonish is pronounced AntigoNISH and not AntiGONish.
— Donna Whitman (@NSBooklady2) January 17, 2023
“Seriously, @KenJennings? AnTIGonish? No. Just no,” added another.
Seriously, @KenJennings? AnTIGonish? No. Just no. #Jeopardy
— Laura de Carteret (@LauraDeCarts) January 17, 2023
@KenJennings @Jeopardy loved seeing my hometown Antigonish Nova Scotia on the game tonight! Now let’s talk pronunciation…
— Caroline O’Connell (@MrsProfRay) January 17, 2023
One person even went as far as to say that late Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek would be “very disappointed” in Jennings’ pronunciation.
#AlexTrebek would be very disappointed with @KenJennings pronunciation of “Antigonish” in a question related to the @AntigonishGames @AntigonishTown @AntigonishCo during @Jeopardy this evening!
— Jennifer Drew (@JenniferJDrew) January 17, 2023
Others were a little more forgiving.
“I’m a come-from-away but I’ve been here for over 30 years,” tweeted one person in defence of the host. “I still have to pause before I say some NS place names (Antigonish being one of them).”
I’m a come-from-away but I’ve been here for over 30 years. I still have to pause before I say some NS place names (Antigonish being one of them). Could have been worse (i.e. Auntie GO nish, “auntie” said the mainland/US way “anti” as opposed to the East Coast “onty”).
— Patricia Madden (@Clarinetish) January 17, 2023
And another Twitter user blamed the error on producers.
@KenJennings Sorry, Ken, #jeopardy producers didn’t give the correct enunciation of that small Nova Scotia town, Antigonish. An-tuh-guh-nuhsh 🇨🇦
— frances ransom (@peacan15) January 17, 2023
So, how do you pronounce Antigonish correctly?
According to one YouTuber, instead of emphasizing the “tig,” it should be said almost like “annie-guh-nish.”
A Reddit thread from two years ago pondered this same question, asking people to answer a poll.
“How do you pronounce Antigonish?” it asked Redditors. “There seems to be some inconsistency as to how this Nova Scotian town’s name is pronounced. How do you pronounce it as an individual?”
“Anigonish without the T” and “I pronounce it how it’s spelled” were the two top answers.
“I don’t pronounce the ‘T’ personally — ‘Anni-ga-nish,'” commented one person. “I find pronunciations all over the place across Nova Scotia though. Lots of insular communities that have developed their own dialects.”
Another person who said they were born and raised in Antigonish agreed that the pronunciation without the “t” is the most accurate.
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