How do you prounce Connecticut?

Is it Connecteecut?

Or Conneteecut?

The latter, according to m-w.

The middle “c” is silent, similar to the initial “c” in “crap music.”

I don’t pronounce the C just before the T, have never heard anyone do so (except jokingly), and do not see it as an alternate pronunciation in my dictionary. It’s pronounced kuh-NET-tuh-cut (all schwas except in the stressed syllable) rather than kuh-NET-tee-cut.

Seriously?

So why the middle “C”?

Some years ago my friends took me to Mackinac Island, seems that this is pronounced Mackinaw, right?.

Then there’s Kansas and Arkansaw.

And you merkins call us Britons for the way we mangle words :smiley:

It’s a jibe at rap music, along the lines of this: Jean Harlow was at a dinner party and kept on addressing Margot Asquith (wife of British prime minister Herbert Asquith) as MargoT (pronouncing the ‘T’). Margot finally had enough and said to her "No Jean, the T is silent, as in Harlow."

Hey, at least we can spell “Chumley” without using 87 letters. :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, I imagine the middle C was pronounced originally, but lost to elision like the MONDE in Cholmondeley.

I’m from CT.

We pronounce it kuh-NET-teh-*Kit *

I frequently admonish Thais that the middle C is silent. Same with the S in Illinois.

Early in the movie The Ice Storm (1997), the Toby Maguire character, who goes to school in New York, is going for a visit to his family in Connecticut, and the train conductor clearly pronounces the middle C. Apparently, it was just to be a clown, but it did make me wonder for a while if I’d been wrong all along by treating it as silent.

I spent a haypenny to buy some Woostershire sauce from Mr. Fanshaw. Yeah, don’t you Brits go hasslin’ us 'bout no silent letters.

connet-eh-cut

if you say “connect-eh-cut” people will laugh at you, or more charitably, assume you are joking.

The name “Connecticut” comes from a name given to the area by the Mohegan tribe, Quinnitukqut, which if you can make your way through it, actually sounds a lot like the way “Connecticut” is pronounced today. (kinnit-ukut) As you’ll note there is no middle “c” in the original name.

The reasons for so many weird spellings, is borrowed native words, and not all of them had a written language, or if they did there were unfamiliar sounds, so the person who wrote it down, tried the best the could with what they had to work with.

I have a bad habit of pronouncing the “C” because when I was in school we had to learn to spell the states and unless I said it, I couldn’t pronounce it.

So I say “Connecticut” as Con-neCT-ti-cut.

It may be wrong but it’s always spelled right :slight_smile:

Even more annoying is the fact that there’s Mackinaw City on the mainland and Mackinac Island offshore.

There’s also Sheboygan, WI and Cheboygan, MI, the latter pronounced like the former is spelled and thus I’m fairly sure they’re pronounced the same. They aren’t even all that close to each other, one being in the middle of the western shore and Lake Michigan and the other being on the southern shore and northern Lake Huron.

There’s also Bellefontaine, OH which is locally pronounced Bell-fountain, and nearby Versailles, OH which is pronounced Ver-sales.

What’s with all you guys ending it in “cut”? It’s “kit”. Well, a schwa, but still. “Cut” looks wrong.

Don’t forget Wapakoneta, pronounced Wopkon.

[Frenchman]
Silly English Con-necticuts!
[/Frenchman]

This is exactly how I pronounce it.

Oh, I know, I was just wondering why a tired joke at the expense of a music form that’s been around for like 30 years now was at all useful in a thread about saying “Connecticut.”

I generally say

“C-nektikit” (pronouncing the first syllable “see”)

or

“Cunettikizzy”

I’m pretty sure no one else does, though…