18. Arkansas: Pronunciation Mandates
State pride and historical identity are viewed as highly serious legal matters in this region. A specific statute officially and legally declares the mathematically and historically correct pronunciation of the state name. The law dictates that the word must be pronounced Arkansaw, strictly forbidding the phonetic pronunciation of the final consonant. The official legislation was passed in 1881 to settle a bitter, highly public dispute between two prominent politicians who refused to agree on how their home should be addressed in public speeches. The law legally protects the French phonetic history of the original indigenous tribal name.