At this point, I don’t even know. I’ve always been much better with consonants than vowels. I think the sound I’m going for is the upside-down capital omega in IPA: /ʊ/.
Ah. That’s how I pronounce both vowels. I have heard people pronounce Connecticut similar to that, but it’s closer to the French schwa because it’s so short. A lot of people use it (incorrectly) at the end of bonjour, if you aren’t sure what sound I mean. (In my hillbilly dialect, it’s also the u in sure, as people don’t open their mouth far enough or move their tongue fast enough to get the “proper” /ʊ/.)
Also Fort Mackinac on the island, Fort Michilimackinac on the mainland, and the Mackinac Bridge connecting the lower penninsula with Yooperland. All of them use the “naw” sound.
As for Ds and Ts, here’s one: Denton, in Texas. Not being from near Denton, I tended to pronounce the T as a T whenever it came up. One day, a lady from there asked me why I pronounced it like that. She said it was … well, not exactly “Dendon,” but ever the softest stop before the final consonant.
How about Tucson AZ? Anyone pronounce the C in that?
Yachats OR is another name with a silent C. This name makes a good shibboleth for telling Oregonians from non-Oregonians. Not that we need another one of those – there’s plenty of others.
Any more silent Cs? Would Silent Cs make a good band name?
A BBC weatherman did one time. 
Which reminds me of the Bangkok Post one time spelling the state “Arisona.” They tend to go with British spellings here and so went a little overboard in changing the Zs to Ss.
They do here in Panama when pronouncing the name of the Hyundai SUV. Spanish is spelled the way it sounds, so Spanish speakers will pronounce words that way. I find it a bit jarring when I hear it.
I think the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a survey roughly 20 years ago that had 1/3 of Missouri’s population favoring the “Missour-uh” pronunciation.
We’ve elected governors that use it. (John Ashcroft was a Missour-uh man.)
Pronunciation also It also depends on where in CT you’re from. There’s the Yankee Northwest corner, the Boston/Rhode Island upper east, and the metro NY lower west.
I grew up in the lower corner, and have a near Long Island accent. We put chawklit on our ice cream and pronounced it Kinnetta-kit.
I’m originally from Rhode Island, and I would often hear it pronounced:
K'neddiki[t]
where the [t] represents a glottal stop.
Then there are places which annoy me by being pronouced exactly as they are spelled. Take, for example, Forked River, NJ. I always thought it was one syllable: “Forkt”, but no, they gotta fool ya by pronouncing it exactly as spelled: Four-kehd.
I’m from Long Island and I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the last syllable as “cut”. I sure as hell don’t - I’m with the local CT guy - kuh Net uh kit.
We - I == some of us
Thank you, I couldn’t come up with the right term.
I sort’a had the opposite problem in Costa Rica. It took me several months to realize that an “arby” was an RV4 - and my Spanish coworkers didn’t believe it until they’d confirmed it with the locals.
Kind of like Newark, Delaware, which is pronounced “New Ark” to distinguish it from Newark (“New’rk”), NJ.
That’s Wooster sauce.
I think you’re right, I’ve been saying it out loud and I must have been forcing myself to say cut. If I say it fast it comes out like kit. The ‘UH’ part was what I was really trying to point out.