Pecan

For What It's Worth:

Not to get in between Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire, but... where I come from, it's pronounced "p'KAHN," just like Hank did it.

I never heard any alternative until I was a full grown man. My mother in law, who is from Indiana, once suggested that the next time I was in Savannah I might get her some pralines. I wasn't sure what a praline was, not having had a lot of fancy candy as a kid, so I asked her. She said it was made of "PEE-kans," which didn't improve my understanding at all. I did finally locate some, though, and once I saw the nuts embedded in it I knew what she'd been trying to say.