Just to be clear- it is Downton, not Downtown
Abbey. When briefly looking at it, roommates,
family members and acquaintances have all asked me about my obsession over Downtown
Abbey, and why I pronounced it so oddly.
It isn’t like the 1964 song by Petula Clark. It is officially Downton Abbey, and here is
the best that I can do in describing how to pronounce it.
Downton
is two syllables; let’s tackle one at a time.
“Down” is gulped down. The letter
‘d’ starts on your tongue, and then it
is as if you want to swallow the vowel. “Ton”
does not have a hard letter ‘t’. It is
barely recognized, or completely lost to the hearing ear, depending on the
exactly dialect and will sound like –tun or –un depending on whether that ‘t’
comes flying out of your mouth or not. “Abbey”
is simple, just keep the letter ‘a’ soft.
There you have it down
(gulped)- un abbey. Now simply repeat
it one hundred times, or go watch it to hear it first hand from the actors.
