Worcester, Massachusetts is the Rodney Dangerfield of cities - no respect at all. But of all the cities around I spend more time there than anywhere else and I really like it. So I put on a smile when I saw that the New York Times agrees with me: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/realestate/commercial/long-a-college-town-worcester-now-looks-the-part.html?ref=education And because this is a distance learning forum I'll even throw in a DL link for the second best Engineering school in Massachusetts - Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Online Graduate Programs - WPI
It has been a long time (Jan 2000?) since I was in Worcester but I remember it having a fun to watch minor league hockey team.
That's the Worcester Sharks! Sharks AHL There's also the Mass Fury for football fans and the Tornadoes for you baseball fans.
Of course Worcester gets no respect – because no one outside Massachusetts knows how to pronounce it. I, too, have spent much time there, and virtually all of my dispatchers over the years (who are, for the most part, in Ohio, which has issues with the pronunciation of some of its own cities) tell me that I’m going to “War-ches-ter.” When I do go to Wuss’ter (the proper pronunciation of Worcester), though, I generally hang out in Sturbridge, a half-hour away and home to the closest decent truckstop – and also the home of a very cool theatre, the Stageloft Repertory Theater [sic], where I’ve been known to spend more than one New Year’s Eve over the last several years.
Where I hang out it's mostly called Wisstuh. If you hang out there long enough you can begin to tell which neighborhood a person comes from by the way they pronounce it. It's a Prof. Henry Higgins thing.
There are several ways to say it but none of them include an "r" Woostah Woostuh Wisstah Wisstuh but never an r at the end - that's how you can spot the foreigners:yup:
Ahh, Wistah, my home town! Good to see it getting some positive spin. And Levicoff, my father lives in Sturbridge. I am assuming you are stopping at Sturbridge Isles? And Kiz is correct, never an "r", heh..
Thanks, all, for the note about the "r" (or lack thereof). I often confuse it with Wooster, Ohio (home of the College of Wooster, which is the summer home of the Ohio Light Opera, one of the best Gilbert & Sullivan companies in the States and for which I had to memorize the lyrics to God Save the Queen) - which is pronounced "Wuss'ter" with the "r." In Sturbridge, I haven't done the Isles (or the other tourist spots), but I have to confess an affinity for Piccadilly Pub. Granted, it's a chain, but at least it's a New England chain. But my biggest affinity is for New England itself since I did my M.A. at Vermont College, then part of Norwich University (before being bought up by Union, then dumped by Union except for the programs they wanted to keep - the campus is now Vermont College of Fine Arts). Unfortunately, the only time I've been to Norwich over the last 20-something years was when I delivered to an egg farm in New Hampshire and had to use Vermont state roads to head to Rochester, NY, from there. Needless to say, I stopped on campus and stocked up on t-shirts and sweat shirts to replace the ones I had that wore out. I still value my old, beat-up "Vermont College of Norwich University" sweatshirt, probably one of the few left in the world.
Here's a silly video of six people from California trying to pronounce the names of places in Massachusetts (Worcester is featured). [video]http://www.movoto.com/ma/massachusetts-pronounce/[/video]
I love Worcester! I spent three years there as an undergrad at Clark University. I only left because of a grave illness in my family. I ended up graduating from Stony Brook University, a well regarded large research university that is part of SUNY. We recently visited Worcester with my daughter this Fall because she applied and was accepted to Clark U. There is something about Worcester that I loved then - and that I still enjoy. I am glad that WPI has some online offerings. I am not sure why Clark does not.
Here's a little update on the state of educational affairs in Wormtown https://www.thegardnernews.com/news/20190317/wall-amp-main-will-worcesters-higher-education-institutions-fall-off-cliff
Looks like Wormtown is having a better time with planning for the survival of schools falling off the wall than its neighbor to the northwest, Vermont. I've lost track of how many small colleges in Vermont have closed (or will close). There's likely a lot to learn from that small state school to the north, SNHU, which not only reversed its own downtrend but became a major player in the DL game.
micro--correction: SNHU is a private non-profit, not a state school. this does not diminish the point you made.
WPI gets a big online education research grant https://www.wbjournal.com/article/wpi-receives-8m-online-education-research-grant
Just like Louisville, which normal people pronounce 'looey-ville' but locals pronounce something like 'loovul'. (You have to have your mouth full of rocks before even trying to say it they way they do.) I just can't trust cities where the residents can't even pronounce the name of their town. ('War-chester'!!) They tell me the Leicester in England, which by anything decent should be 'lye-kester' is pronounced by locals 'lester'. That's just as stupid as naming a city 'Sydney'.
