I found myself embroiled in an unexpectedly lively argument the other night with an online friend over the native pronunciation of Toronto.

Quite a few sources, including this professional dialogue coach, assert that native Canadian speakers often elide the second ’T’ and pronounce the city’s name as “Tuh-RAHn(t)-o”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCujbX8aqE&t=295s

My online friend who has lived there for most of their life however insists that this is complete fiction, and they became quite irate when I referred to online sources on the subject  - apparently I  was peddling “AI Slop” in their view. (I live in UK and have never visted Toronto)

Linguistic sources suggest that Canadians quite frequently elide a ’T’ if it follows a stressed syllable - e.g. ‘Internet’ becomes ‘In-ner(t)-net’.

Are there any native Canucks from Toronto who would care to offer an opinion ?

You shouldn't have built the Tower of Babel... ;)

There wouldn't be any problems... ;)

Do you know how to read ‘through’ in my language?

fru

Oh FFS, it's Tuh Ron Toe. I've been there, had a Canuck friend who lived there for decades, never heard anyone drop the second T. In writing, sometimes they refer to TO (as in Toronto, Ontario).

Someone just made up a fake shibboleth. Or yes, maybe AI slop.

I just read that someone (s) concoted a non-existent fireworks display in Birmingham, btw. Thousands showed up. TWICE. Not AI, just a-hole pranksters. (Full Disclosure: there is an impish part of my psyche that was a wee bit amused at the image of all these people milling around wondering where the fireworks were...one could even argue that the prank did bring people together and create, at least briefly, a festive NY gathering.)

No, the second T is not silent.
Sloppy ( or lazy ) pronunciation often omits the second T, and quite often lately, the ORONT , leaving only TO.
Probably the result of social media; easier to type just two letters on a phone keyboard.

( TO is just across the lake for me )

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by MigL

This seems to be a linguistic rabbit-hole of unexpectedly large dimensions.

The name Toronto is said to be derived from a Mohawk word tkaraonto documented as far back as 1615 which referred to sapling trees planted by the native Huron as a fish weir in a river area between two lakes. So right from the start, a letter  ‘K’ has been lost overboard in the passage of time.

Canada is officially a bilingual country, and it would appear that Francophone speakers (both mono and bi-lingual) usually enunciate both the T letters in ‘Toronto’ quite clearly. Whereas monoglot speakers of American English are prone to slur a medial ’T’ into  what is known as alveolar  ‘tap’  or flap sound -  written as  ⟨ɾ⟩ in the IPA  - or even into a glottal stop  IPA ⟨ʔ⟩ in some cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental_and_alveolar_taps_and_flaps

Some natives from the downtown area of Toronto apparently like to rhyme ’Toronto’ with ‘piranha’ - there is a joke that you can tell how close you are to the downtown by the frequency with which you hear this :-)

Language evolves and dialects form. There is no one right way, only the way considered common within some arbitrary local context and culture