Apparently, this video’s been out for a few months but we just saw it on the newsroom TV last night.
Actually, we heard it in the background and literally said, “What the hell is Nee-puh?”
New DiscoverNEPA Video
Watch this video and you’ll hear it 15 times in 3 minutes.
Nee-puh this. Nee-puh that.
Seriously, what is Nee-puh?
OK, we get it. “Nee-puh” is really Northeast PA. But this Discover NEPA group is trying to create our own version of SoCal. Is it just us or does “nee-puh” miss the mark?
NEPA (pronounced nee-puh, as it is 15 times in this video) sounds more like an undiscovered tribe than it does a region of the US.
Is it where we live or assistance we can get on our heating bill?
Knee Deep in Nee-puh
We’ve mentioned that “nee-puh” is said 15 times in this 3 minute video. That’s once every 12 seconds. It’s also called brainwashing.
Obviously, unless there’s a whole other Northeast PA in a parallel universe where this term is said all the time, we’ve never heard anyone pronounce NEPA like “nee-puh”.
N-E-P-A is more likely. Northeast PA is fairly common, too.
Nee-puh doesn’t roll off the tongue, though, does it? There’s nothing natural about it.
It’s nothing like the ones you hear pretty regularly. You’ve got:
- SoCal: Southern California
- Yooper: A person from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
- SoHo: The area of New York City south of Houston St.)
- Delmarva: That’s a happy marriage of three states and it really does roll off the tongue.
But not Nee-puh. No matter how many times they say it in this video, no one is going to walk around saying this. Ever.
Even this logo can’t figure out how to do the phonics on it:
If you’re going to insist on the “long E” sound for Nee-puh, the light should be above it. We’ll lay off that and credit the designer’s poetic license.
And don’t get us wrong here, the video is actually really nice. It’s good to see Northeast PA shown in such a positive light.
Our problem here is with people being told to run around calling this place “Nee-puh”. We feel at least one person should have done this in the past to warrant an entire marketing campaign around the use of this new word.
It’s bad enough people insist on calling Schuylkill County “The Skook”, do we need to add insult to injury?
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