In a recent interview on WPR’s Wisconsin Today, Jackie Johnson (a.k.a. Miss Pronouncer) talked about the development of her pronunciation website, MissPronouncer.com. Over its twenty-year history, the website has grown to include about 3,000 audio clips of Wisconsin place names and personalities. The work began when Jackie was an anchor-reporter for the Wisconsin Radio Network.
Over the years, Jackie created a database of audio clips by verifying local pronunciations of cities, towns and villages and then making recordings of herself saying the names. In 2005, she launched MissPronouncer.com, the first of its kind. She describes the website as, “A halfway decent audio pronunciation guide for Wisconsin.”
Back in 2011, the State Cartographer’s Office worked with Jackie to produce the first version of Pronounce Wisconsin, an online mapping app allowing users to click a place on the map and hear Jackie’s audio clip recording. Earlier this year, Eugenie Huang, a Graduate Student in GIS at UW-Madison’s Department of Geography and a Project Assistant with the State Cartographer’s Office, updated Pronounce Wisconsin using new web mapping technology.
The WPR story includes a mention of Eugenie’s work and a quotation from Jackie saying she is honored to be included in the new app.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Eugenie commented:
That is exactly why I love working at the State Cartographer’s Office so much: the work we do quietly finds its way into classrooms, research and communities. Moments like this remind me that our efforts ripple out further than we realize. That is deeply fulfilling, and I am proud to have contributed, even in a small way, to a project that continues to bridge voices, places and people.
Thank you, Eugenie, for your work and your thoughtful words!