When only white people are around, what is the best way to pronounce Spanish words?
My Cuban ex used to go mental when people would pronounce Amarillo TX the way most people outside of Texas pronounce is which is ah-mah-rill-oh [with that nasal American ah] instead of the more Spanish ah-ma-rree-yo [with the ahhh sound]. When I went to liberal arts school in the super-PC eighties, this was a huge problem with everyone trying to be culturally sensitive, sometimes at the expense of meaning. To me it’s all about your audience — thus back to the original question — there might be a small chance that you are being more understandable in a fast-talking-hard-to-hear-anyhow way if you use Spanish pronunciation around Spanish-speakers. However, it also seems just silly to use strongly accented Spanish pronunciation if you are conferring no such benefit.
Well, leaving aside the detail that Spanish people are predominantly “white”… I don’t really agree with your apparent premise – that if no Spanish (or Spanish-speaking) people are around, you should “anglicise” Spanish words. Not if you know how they should be pronounced, anyway. It seems a bit wrong to assume ignorance of correct pronunciation on the part of your companions. I think the same goes for any other language. If you know how to pronounce the word correctly, do so. On the other hand I know where you’re coming from: I often go to liquor stores in NYC and ask for Remy Martin. I always pronounce “Martin” in the correct French way (Mar-tan) at first and they often don’t get it. So then I say “MarTIN”. But I do feel I should do it right first. If a non-English word gets anglicised (as in the Brit English “fillet” for “filet”), then fair enough – pronounce it in the anglicised way. But if it really is a use of a true foreign word, pronounce it correctly if you can. And if other
Like Beth, I live not far from Gwadaloop St in Austin, TX. Despite assaults on Spanish pronunciation like that, I do think there are different ambient levels of Spanish fidelity among different anglophone communities. Among my crowd in Texas, it’s a little higher than among my crowd in Chicago, where I grew up. Back there, I had a girlfriend whose innocence of Spanish pronunciation extended to pronouncing the Spanish word for “chicken” exactly the same as name for the aristocratic sport involving ponies and mallets. Although my own knowledge of the language is derived primarily from the study of menus in Mexican restaurants, I couldn’t help but cringe at that. Down here, my friends all pronounce Chile as “CHEE-lay.” It’s not pretentious. But a friend who lived in El Salvador for a year, and speaks Spanish well, pronounces that country’s name anglo-style. OTOH, I would enjoy watching snippets of Spanish-language TV in Chicago and hearing local advertisers pronounce street names like Pul
How would you not pronounce your examples without using Spanish? Do you pronounce jalapeno with a hard J, or Hacienda with a hard H? IMO, not pronouncing them in spanish is annoying. I think the pronunciations that quadog is referring to mostly involve changes in vowel sounds: Spanish has fewer vowel sounds than English, and English speakers will tend to insert English vowel sounds into Spanish words. In addition, sometimes e and i sounds are transposed. For instance, “jalapeño” would be pronounced “HA-LUH-PEE-NO” rather than “HA-LA-PAY-NYO”. The “e” in “hacienda” becomes a short e sound that doesn’t exist in Spanish. It becomes really obvious if you know what to listen for. My big pet peeve with this issue is the pronunciation of the name of the country just West of Argentina and South of Peru. It’s like fingernails on the blackboard to me when people refer to it as “Chilli”. Of course, I realize that some people have the same response when I pronounce it (relatively) correctly. I als
