I work in New Orleans and live in the adjacent suburb of Metairie, or more correctly, unincorporated Jefferson Parish (like everyone else's counties).

Now, in case you should visit, let me try to give you a pronunciation guide.

New Orleans is NOT pronounced N'awlins as is it often depicted to non-residents. It's a little more complicated. The New is pronounced kind of like Noo, but short and does kind of run into the second word. Now the difficult part is trying to describe the pronunciation of the first syllable of Orleans. It is somewhere between a long O and awe, and there is kind of a rising inflection. Interestingly, the same O/awe sound is found in words like John and darling, and John can become a two-syllable word as in:
"Jo-awn, wheah y'at, doawlin'?" To which, of course, the appropriate reply is, in the vernacular of our contemporaries: "Awriiight!"

If you are ever headed this way, by all means give me a call. It is much easier to demonstrate such pronunciations than to try to describe them. Just please, don't say N'awlins. Somebody might knock you right off the neutral ground when you are on your way to make groceries! But vocabulary is a whole other story. :-)
Raymond