About three decades ago I read a book on English usage that was already quite old at the time—I think it was a 1940s book—which pointed out a pronunciational habit that I hadn't noticed before. The word "street" in any location name would have the stress on the other word—BOND Street, OXFORD Street, DEAN Street—while with any other kind of generic topographical descriptor it would be the other way round: Hyde PARK, Leicester SQUARE, Angel LANE, Dollis HILL, Edgware ROAD, Portland PLACE, Crouch END.
The book limited itself to UK referents, but it seemed to me the same was true elsewhere. In the US people would say, FOURTH Street, TENTH Street, etc, but Madison AVENUE, Times SQUARE, Central PARK, Dealey PLAZA. And I think all other English-speaking countries followed the same rule. It was even true of fictional names with a figurative purpose: GRUB Street, EASY Street, but Fat CITY, Lonesome ROAD, Tin Pan ALLEY...
But I wondered whether it was still true today, or completely true. Because I do notice one strange pronunciational development, which I think of as the "leftward-drifting stress". This is more noticeable in the US than elsewhere. I've seen pre-war American films where people can be clearly heard talking of cigarETTES and magaZINES, in contrast to modern renderings, CIGarettes and MAGazines. More recently, we've had olive OIL and soy SAUCE becoming OLIVE oil and SOY sauce. One of the clear-up crew after the Twin Towers attack spoke of "powdered CEment" (and he wasn't even from the south, where you might expect it). And only last week I heard a news report mentioning PAKistan and BANGladesh. There seems to be this trend of shifting stresses leftwards of where they are supposed to be, and I wondered if this might start infecting the pronunciation of the kind of place names I listed above. Is anyone tempted to say, "I visited TIMES Square"?
