Rebecca, thanks for the comment. I pronounce the name of the Big Easy as my very close friends do, who were born and raised there. There are a number of ways to pronounce New Orleans, and here's an excerpt from The Gumbo Pages:

NEW ORLEENS – (two syllables) The way silly tourists pronounce “New Orleans”. Natives do not do this. Exception — song lyrics, as in “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans”, for example, and when omitting the “New”, as in “Orleans Parish”, which is always pronounced . Confusing, isn’t it? More on this below.

First off, is generally a no-no. It’s like putting a big, red neon sign on your head that says, “I’m not from around here.” As also mentioned above, the two main exceptions are when it’s pronounced like that in song lyrics (easier to rhyme, but contributes to the confusion of non-natives) and when “Orleans” stands alone without the “New”, as in Orleans Parish.

Here are the major standard local pronunciations of the City’s name: , , , . The fabled “N’Awlins”, pronounced , is used by some natives for amusement, and by some non-natives who think they’re being hip, but actually I’ve come across very few locals who actually pronounce the name of the City in this way.

Ben Fortson, an Uptown boy, adds, “There are also versions without the final -s, as in Fats Domino’s “walkin’ to Noo Awlin”. The s-lessness is presumably from the French. Also, “Noo Awyuns”, with a -y- instead of an -l-, is pretty common in my experience, and kind of interesting from a linguistic point of view. By the way, the shorter versions like Nawlins and Nawlns that you say aren’t used much by locals have in fact been used at least by me all my life, for what that’s worth. Maybe Uptown is diff’rint.” (Yeah, it is, bra … it’s where dey got all dem shoits wid da lil’ gators on ‘em, and everyone has 59 rows o’ teeth!)