How do you pronounce Detroit? (2013)

[alricb]

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_]

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

[evincarofautumn]

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]

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!

[NittLion78]

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

[danans]

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.

[Brendinooo]

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!

[ctab]

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.

[Allegrippus]

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]

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".

[sevensor]

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

[ams6110]

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

[analog31]

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

[rmason]

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

[analog31]

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.

[amyjess]

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]

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

[jdfellow]

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.

[radicalbyte]

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".

[swamp40]

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.

[afgho]

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

[nv-vn]

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

[wernercd]

"Shhhh-eeet-hole"

[grubles]

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

[chasing]

Duh-TRERT.

[anthk]

As in Spanish:

Day-troit .