All over the map: Is it Mount-lake Terrace or Mont-lake Terrace?

This might be a case of making a mountain out of a molehill. Or maybe that should be “MONT-ain.”

There’s a name of a certain city in Snohomish County which I have always pronounced a particular way. I never had much reason to actually go there as a child, growing up as I did of modest means in the suburbs east of Lake Washington, roaming the blackberry-choked vacant lots atop Rose Hill, midway between Kirkland and Redmond.

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Thus, in my family, we always pronounced “Mountlake Terrace” as if “Mountlake” was spelled just like the Seattle neighborhood, body of water and boulevard that are all spelled “Montlake.” Phonetically, our pronunciation might be “MAWNT-lake” or “MONT-lake.”

I’ve been noticing that on weekday mornings, I often hear KIRO Radio traffic reporter Chris Sullivan say “MOUNT-lake Terrace.” Then, I hear Tracy Taylor saying the same thing in the afternoons.

Yes, you say, but what do those carpet-bagging media types know, anyway? Didn’t they all just move here from Great Falls, Montana, and are only biding their time in backwater Seattle until a better gig comes up in Los Angeles or New York?

To further “research” this nagging question, I got up early and called a bunch of “officials” and other places in Mountlake Terrace so I could hear what their outgoing voicemail messages say. Here’s what I found:

Voicemail at city hall, the high school, the city clerk’s office and the local movie theater all say “MOUNT-lake” Only the message at the city swimming pool said “MONT-lake.” Maybe that person grew up in Kirkland, too.

I also reached out to some of my siblings and old friends, most of whom also grew up on the Eastside. Half of them said “MOUNT-lake,” the other half said “MONT-lake.”

There was one more place to check: the “bible” of Washington place name pronunciation, compiled by Hugh Rundell and published in 1964 by Washington State University to aid broadcasters. You can download your own copy here.

I was shocked to see the correct pronunciation listed, right there in black and white on page 51, as “MOUNT-lake.”

Perhaps we are witnessing linguistic evolution in real-time. A similar thing happened with Alki Beach over in West Seattle. It used to be pronounced “AL-kee,” but that went away beginning around the 1930s, and the phenomenon was much debated in the print media of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Or, maybe there was always a collective ignorance among my friends, relatives and myself about how to correctly pronounce Mountlake Terrace.

I think from now on, I’ll just play it safe and only talk about Des Moines.

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