@woozle huh, didn't expect to hear the "ellinois" pronunciation in practice

it reminded me of ben brainard's series of videos called "welcome to the table" (started off in 2020 during the covid lockdown, now seemingly on hiatus as he's doing proper stand-up) where he acts as the federal government and the states (except hawaii) and on one hand covers the news comedically from mostly a center-left standpoint, on the other shows off each individual state's culture (most famously florida, but that's because ben lived most of his life there)

and back in his video on illinois, one of the things was about how its natives tend to pronounce the state's name as "ellinois"