It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region,

and investigate, report, explore.

From WB.E.Z.

Maureen Worcester grew up in the suburbs, and this left her open to some teasing for the way she

pronounced certain Chicago street names by her parents

who were raised in the city. I remember them laughing at me for saying Paulina and Throop instead of

Polina and Troupe. So I guess I've always wondered why we pronounce those that way. I'm Monica Eng,

reporter for Curious City, and we get a lot of questions on how to pronounce

certain Chicago street names. In fact, we recently answered one on how the CTA decides how to pronounce

him. Like Marines' parents, they also go with...

Polina and Troop. Even though they look like they could be Polina and Throop.

I recently asked the Chicago Sun-Times Tom McNamee. He co-wrote a book on Chicago street

names. It's a way of saying where we're from. So if I'm sitting in a bar at 111st Street where I

used to be a bartender and someone says, Troop, it's his way or her way of saying that they're

from the neighborhood. And if that same person is downtown and the office building with a bunch of people from the north side,

and that word comes up, they probably say throop.

So that explains why folks would pronounce it differently.

But it doesn't explain the origin of this pronunciation.

So I turn to linguist David Dorian. He studies the Chicago accent,

and he thinks it's linked to the Irish, Polish, and Czech immigrants, who settled, among other

places, around Throop and 33rd. See, their native languages didn't have the TH sound. So he thinks

they just went with a T sound. So with words like troop or like

...