# Pronunciation of Clinton

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pronunciation-of-clinton/440228>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 5, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pronunciation-of-clinton/440228 "2008-03-05T20:24:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2008, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pronunciation-of-clinton/440228/21 "2008-03-08T12:28:46Z")

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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]  
Some people might pronounce “Santa” with a silent “t,” but nobody would pronounce it with a glottal stop.  
[/QUOTE]  
Of course not. That’s not what I was saying. I was just saying that you’d want to see how a person handled that particular allophone.

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**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2008, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pronunciation-of-clinton/440228/22 "2008-03-08T12:45:33Z")

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[QUOTE=TWDuke]  
“Going” clearly ends with a “g,” but I don’t think it marks someone as ignorant if they pronounce it as “goin” in everyday speech. If I were giving a formal speech about “Santa Claus” I’d probably pronounce it more carefully than if I were just casually discussing Sana Claus.  
[/QUOTE]  
That’s what I mean by marked.

ALL letters are silent. Ink on a page (or pixels on a screen) don’t make sounds. Humans start talking long before they start writing. Writing is a convention we use to represent how we talk, and to communicate in silence. If you change the way you’d otherwise speak because of how something is written, it’s an affectation.

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**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pronunciation-of-clinton/440228/23 "2008-03-08T18:09:57Z")

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I say Clin’n, with the “t” sound virtually non-existent.

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