Are we all saying “Passyunk” wrong?

In this time of widespread division and chaos, The Inquirer decided to unite all Philadelphians by documenting the definitive way we pronounce “Passyunk.” Were we motivated to act by a random New Yorker article confidently declaring this word is pronounced “‘passion’ with a ‘k’”? Absolutely. But our quest grew far beyond that.

The effort left some of us, and those we interviewed, questioning who we were and what we know on a fundamental level. One woman interviewed by The Inquirer, for example, claimed to pronounce the word exactly the same as her husband, who proceeded to pronounce it completely differently.

The word Passyunk today is something of a defining Philadelphia word, much like the oft-discussed “wooder.” Linguists study dialects in part because they can become proxies for a whole range of seemingly unrelated information about a person, from age to race to gender. So… how do you say it?

Let us begin with what we know. “Passyunk” is the Lenape word for “in the valley (ies),” according to the Lenape Talking Dictionary, a digitized resource documenting the Southern Unami dialect of the Lenape people when they lived in what is now Philadelphia.

The original pronunciation was likely something like “pah-SIGH-unk,” said the Rev. J.R. Norwood, a former councilman and Supreme Court justice for the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and a current delegate to the National Congress of American Indians.

When European colonists arrived in the area, the pronunciation of Lenape words was documented based on how the colonists heard and tried to pronounce them, Norwood said. That means that the “original” pronunciations of such words were not static, but changing even as they were recorded by Europeans. Some early maps spelled it in the Northern Umami dialect as “Pachsegink,” Norwood said.

“If you were to hear someone saying the Lord’s Prayer in Old English, even though it’s a form of English...you wouldn’t recognize most of the words,” said Norwood, who has studied the Lenape language but is not fluent in it. “Some of the [Lenape] place names and terms would go back more than 1,000 years.”

In the 1650s, Passyunk covered an area along the Schuylkill down toward the Delaware, where more than 1,000 Lenape people lived, said Jean Soderlund, a retired history professor at Lehigh University and author of the book Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn.

These days, some South Philadelphians fiercely believe that true, lifelong South Philly residents say PASH-unk (We think this is what the New Yorker was referring to with its “passion with a k” bit). But that is not the case. Even veteran South Philadelphians say the word differently — sometimes with two syllables, sometimes with three, some with a “sh” in the middle and some without.

Suzanne Tavani, president of the Passyunk Square Civic Association, has lived in South Philadelphia her entire life. She is adamant that the neighborhood is pronounced PASS-ee-unk.

“My mother was always very keen to correct me if I dared say PASH-unk,” Tavani said. Her mother knew how to pronounce it because she was “not stupid,” Tavani said.

But Josephine Rettig, 95, was born in Bella Vista, lived here her entire life, and disagrees. She always said PASH-unk. She has never argued with anyone about the pronunciation because, first of all, it’s absolutely obvious.

“Who am I going to argue with? Myself?” Rettig asked as she shopped for groceries at the Acme on Passyunk Avenue. She was accompanied by Damita Belser, 45, her home health care aide and another lifelong Philadelphian. Belser grew up in North Philly and pronounces the avenue almost identically to Rettig: PASH-unk.

Yet down the street, Abdulageed Alkamel, the 27-year-old owner of Charlie grocery, says PASH-ee-unk.

The original mission to determine the definitive pronunciation proved impossible, as language and culture are dynamic, ever-evolving forces that have resulted in multiple “correct” pronunciations over thousands of years. We're forever bound to debate it.

When even devoted Philadelphians cannot agree, sometimes it’s best for non-Philadelphians to say nothing at all. Janice Sermania, co-owner of Sermania Jewelry on Passyunk Avenue, has noticed that silence is what out-of-state vendors often choose when they call to confirm the store’s delivery address.

They begin the word, but they rarely finish it.

“‘Pass’...” she said. “And they go, ‘Oh, this is a difficult one.’”