Since our blog’s humble launch no more than a month ago, we’ve been answering some tough questions like “how can you live without coney dogs?” or “do they have potholes in your neck of the woods for that ol’ hometown feel?”
More importantly, many readers and Detroit fanatics ask why our title is French. When I talk about the blog verbally (mostly out loud to myself since I haven’t associated my identity with the blog) I say the words in my best hacked French accent. Do Detroiters not realize we’ve all been talking in our best hacked French accent our whole lives (and laugh at the out-of-towners who Americanize things?)
Think about it - Dequindre. Gratiot. No middle-of-the-range midwestern (or new traffic reporter) can muster up the proper pronunciations without having a home-grown kindergardener schooling them.
Proper in a Detroit sense because we botched the actual pronunciation of the words.
Detroit was settled by Frenchman Antonie de la Mothe Cadillac and named the town after the French word for ‘straight’, referencing the river connecting two of the Great Lakes. In pure French elegance, our town should be pronounced dee-twoi. And Gratiot should be grah-she-oh, yet we so elegantly pronounce it gra-shit.
So as far as the blog goes, we wanted to have the roots as much as the city’s beginnings. But as far as pronunciation goes, you call it “do dee-troyt” or “doo dee-twoi” because either in the minds of a Detroiter is right.
Found another Detroit tumblr gem.
