The most common one I heard was CHOP - i - Too - les.
CHOP A TOOLIOUS/LESS (either works) is probably the best way for some one to pronounce it, I struggled massively with it for a while, I also live near a river called Tchefuncte River, you gotta love the French.
I was thinking '
choo-pee-
too-lass', with primary stress on 'too' and secondary on 'choo'. That's based on that 'ou' is often pronounced similar to English 'oo', and 'i' similar to English 'ee' (if a little shorter),
I got curious where it came from (obviously
) and it's native American (Choctaw) originally. I suppose it's the French spelling to approximate the original sound, which then gets murdered by pronouncing what's written as if it were an English word. (Like Illinois, where the 's' wasn't pronounced originally - which is actually also an issue what my attempt above, which should have finished in 'lah' I guess.) Language is fun that way.
Is the history the same for that Tchefuncte River? I see it's also based on Choctaw, but I don't see the French origin in the spelling quite as obviously; the 'functe' bit looks weird for that.
(Yes, language is amazing. And I live in a mostly-francophone community, so I have some extra interest in the francophone history of North America.)