#20: An Interesting History
The different pronunciations of “Kansas” and “Arkansas” may be one of the biggest mysteries of American English. No one seems to know why they are spelled so similarly but pronounced completely differently! It turns out there’s an interesting historical reason that people in the United States pronounce these two words differently. Basically, we have the French to thank.
French colonizers coined Arkansas as a plural form of “akansa,” a term used by the Algonquians to describe the Quapaw, a Native American tribe. The letter “s” at the end of French words is usually silent, so we pronounce Arkansas the way we do. Kansas, on the other hand, is a spelling coined by English-speaking colonizers, dedicated to the Kansa tribe. English words usually pronounce “s” at the end of words, which is why it’s pronounced differently.