re: Arkansas' or Arkansas's.....which one is grammatically correct?

quote:

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ar-KAN-sas

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Nope

The state name Arkansas ultimately derives from the name of an Siouan people who lived in the valley of the Arkansas River. The area was first settled by the French, who usually used the spelling Arkansa to refer to the tribe and to the village in which they lived. They used the plural, Arkansas, to refer to members of the tribe.
The French used the name in the plural to refer to the Arkansas River--la rivière des Arkansas, "the river of the Arkansas"--and the name Arkansas was then applied to the territory, and, eventually, to the state.
After the region was de-Frenched in the early nineteenth century, the pronunciation remained the French one--or, rather, an Anglicized version of the French one--which would be something like "Arkansaw." In fact, the Arkansaw spelling is the one used on the Act that created the territory. But in the end, the original Arkansas spelling is the one that prevailed, but it did so with an Anglicized version of the French pronunciation.
By the way, the state of Kansas, also named by the French for an Indian people and with the -s representing a French plural, dropped the French pronunciation entirely and adopted an English pronunciation based on the Kansas spelling, which is why the pronunciation of Kansas and Arkansas differ.”

It was always pronounced Ar-kan-saw