Bologna's Odd Spelling

Bologna is a famous lunch meat in America, whether you eat it on a sandwich or on a Lunchable cracker. In this country we pronounce the word as "baloney", and yet it is spelled in way that would not suggest we are saying it right. What's the reason for this?

It turns out bologna got its name from the place that it was first made, Bologna, Italy. In italian, the letters 'GN' represent the character ɲ, called the palatal nasal. In the italian language the word bologna is roughly pronounced "balonya" with stress over the "lon" sound. Now for those who have grown up in America, many do not have the accent necessary to properly pronounce the word the way it is supposed to sound, and so it has been adapted in our culture to be pronounced "baloney" while keeping the original spelling intact.