How do you pronounce Detroit? (2013)

https://glossographia.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/how-do-you-pronounce-detroit/

by evo_9 • 11 years ago

27 28 11 years ago

glossographia.wordpress.com

amyjess• 11 years ago

Well, that's interesting.

I'm not from Detroit -- in fact, I've never been there, and I don't have any family there either, but I've always pronounced it /ˈdiˌtɹɔɪt/, which according to the article is an uncommon pronunciation only used by locals.

ZenoArrow• 11 years ago

I can't read phonetic spellings, do you know of any audio samples for the pronunciations?

This video has the pronunciation I use, I don't know if that's the 'locals only' one or not:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UfsmfJ_fYMU

zrail• 11 years ago

I've lived in the Detroit area for a few years and that's basically how I say it, except without the "WHAT" suffix.

ams6110• 11 years ago

The DEE-troit variant is what I've commonly heard from more rural southern dialects also (a/k/a "redneck" or country)

analog312• 11 years ago

When I lived in Texas for a while, I was introduced to IN-surance.

sgentle• 11 years ago

I recently discovered that some Americans say COM-ponent (I say com-PON-ent - same sounds, different emphasis). Not sure how regional it is.

afgho• 11 years ago

like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH7u1ZeRK34

NittLion78• 11 years ago

I only pronounce it by the original French day-TWAH.

anthk• 11 years ago

As in Spanish:

Day-troit .

radicalbyte• 11 years ago

I'm British so my natural pronunciation would be very close to the third example.

However I've watched enough 30 Rock to know that the correct pronunciation is a slow "deeeTROIT".

alricb• 11 years ago

You use the French pronunciation, [detʁwɑ], obviously. Although when it was founded they might have pronounced [detʀwe].

Edit: but note that in English I would use an English pronunciation.

pygy_• 11 years ago

https://translate.google.com/#fr/en/D%C3%A9troit for the curious.

evincarofautumn• 11 years ago

Hah. From this article, I actually did learn that “adroit” is not pronounced /adrwa/ in English. French and native English speaker, but I’d only ever seen it written.

evo_9• 11 years ago

I grew up next to a canadian family (the Bryants) and the dad worked as a penalty box time keeper for the NHL. I played hockey with his son for years, and went to games regularly with him and his dad; he would drop us off at their seats about 15 rows behind the penalty boxes, and head down ‘work’. He’d often bring home broken sticks - like Ken Dryden’s one game. I also watched 'Hockey Night in Canada' religiously and the announcers always pronounced it the 4th way; I think this is why I pronounce it the fourth way myself, I heard it said by my friend and his dad and those classic CBC announcers more than anyone else I knew.

De-TROY-it!

Brendinooo• 11 years ago

I went to high school in a city called Latrobe, and while most outsiders pronounce it lah-TROBE, plenty of natives (including myself) tend to call it LAY-trobe. Interesting to see Detroit have some similar variants.

And to all the day-TWAH folk in here - better stay away from Western PA - DuBois (DOO-boys) and North Versailles (ver-sails) would drive you nuts!

sevensor• 11 years ago

A bit further East on 80, Bellefonte (BELL font) is another good one.

Allegrippus• 11 years ago

When I worked in Pittsburgh and Johnstown, I had coworkers from the Latrobe area, and since I'm from east of the Alleghenies (where lah-TROBE tends to be popular) it always took some conscious effort on my part to say LAY-trobe, which I understood to be correct :-)

biot• 11 years ago

And stay away from courtrooms where some lawyers pronounce "voir dire" (that jury selection thing) as "voar dyer" instead of "vwah deer". And far too many people pronounce "et cetera" as "eck cetera".

ctab• 11 years ago

The LAY-trobe phenomenon is real and something that outsiders have picked up on in my speaking (as a fellow Latrobean) after I moved away. My theory is that Latrobe as an adjective is "LAY-trobe" and the noun pronunciation is "lah-TROBE"; not really sure if that holds up to scrutiny though.

swamp40• 11 years ago

My guess is that after saying it for the millionth time, some locals just naturally speed up their conversation by shortening it to the two-syllable version, di-TRITE.

danans• 11 years ago

Growing up in the Detroit area, I always associated the DEE-troit pronunciation with exclamations of a hyper-local flavor, like an announcer at an (american) football game saying "DEE-troit Lions!", also with fans chanting at sports games: "DEE-troit! DEE-troit!". I actually can't think of any other way to chant it.

nv-vn• 11 years ago

Interesting. The most common pronunciation I've heard was something like "deeTROIT".

chasing• 11 years ago

Duh-TRERT.

grubles• 11 years ago

Lived in Indiana as a kid until 13 years old. I pronounce it Deh-troit.

jdfellow• 11 years ago

I spent a couple of years in Ontario, including a few months in Sarnia (about an hour and a half north of Detroit), and I certainly heard a lot of the "de-TROY-it" variant. I found it amusing.

wernercd• 11 years ago

"Shhhh-eeet-hole"

rmason• 11 years ago

Native Detroiter and I've heard all these pronunciations. But I must object to Don Cherry referred to as a blowhard but he is most definitely a character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7PzS1A08Wg

analog312• 11 years ago

While we're on the subject, there are a lot of interesting names in the Detroit area. There's a street called Livernois Avenue, which is pronounced Liver-Noise, and a town of Milan, that's pronounced MY-lan. I wonder if this is just the result of the melting pot.

How do you pronounce Detroit? (2013)

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