re: Pronunciation Guide to Arkansas Places

pioneer, I know you'll show up in this thread eventually.

How did you grow up pronouncing Batesville? My family usually says "Bates-vuhl" rather than "Bates-vihl" but that's not always the case. I always say it the latter way now, but my southern accent is not very strong and I haven't lived there for 14 years.

I think it's a common thing in Arkansas to change place names like this.

Prescott, for instance, is another good example from this thread. The vowel is changed in the final syllable to a "uh" sound, and it's a particularly "short" vowel sound. It's like you're going from the hard C sound to the T is as short a time as possible, so the O sound gets changed to a short "uh" sound. It's the same thing with Batesville.