When only white people are around, what is the best way to pronounce Spanish words?
Well assuming the white people aren’t Spanish themselves — there are lots of white people in Spain, you know — you can follow these simple rules. If you have some knowledge of the language, go ahead and pronounce them whichever way you want. If the Spanish pronunciation comes more naturally, pronounce it in Spanish. If you’re trying to practice your Spanish, why not? If you’re pronouncing the words in a special way to show how world-wise you are, then spare us. In general, simply being pretentious isn’t good, so avoid it. But not everyone who does this is trying to show you they know Spanish. Even if someone is not trying to be pretentious, why worry about it? He or she has already failed to look genuine. I have friends that pronounce words in French and Italian all the time. Crepes, creme brulee, chateau, mozzarell, Ciao, etc. Some of them are being pretentious. Some are just doing what they’ve been doing what comes naturally. But I get the feeling you want to ask a different questi
I like to pronounce all Spanish words with a Portuguese accent, just to be different. I think if you actually know how to pronounce words in their native language, then I think you should go ahead and do it, so long as you can manage it without being smug. I do it for French. I do it for Portuguese. I do it for Spanish where I can.
Please keep in mind that racial politics and taxonomies aren’t the same the world over. In Chile, to keep up the example, most of the people don’t think of themselves as being any race at all. What you have is a broad spectrum going from “almost all indian blood” to “almost no indian blood”, dark to light, but we don’t have racial check boxes in our public documents. Which is not to say we don’t have racism, as your income and social standing in inversely proportional to how much indian blood you have, but it’s a continuous sort of discrimination, not a discrete one like in the U.S. “Gringos” (any blonde, non-iberian european language speaker), “chinos” (any asian person), “negros” (blacks), etc. are a statistical anomaly and most people feel free to gawk and/or discriminate them, as they are seen as “other”. And “hispanic” is not a race, “latino” isn’t one either. Mapuches (the majority indigenous people) make a distinction between themselves and “Chilenos”, and most non-Mapuches woul
But I get the feeling you want to ask a different question — is it ok for me to resent it when people pronounce these words in a Spanish accent? On closer examination of my question I think this is probably what I was asking without knowing it. I don’t go out of my way to by overly judgmental but there are certain social cues that get flagged for me while interacting with someone. The pronunciation issue is one of those. I think it boils down to the authenticity of the person speaking – their language background and motivation for talking one way or the other. If anything your responses are allowing me to be more understanding of those who I would normally perceive to be Spanish grandstanding.
Ok, this totally doesn’t answer your question, but first of all, lots of white people are hispanic. In response to your actual question, it seems like a lot more trouble to have two different pronunciations for a word and have to guess at the native language of everyone present before deciding which to use. I would think if you were using any word you would pronounce it as correctly as you are able. In the case of foreign words, that would mean pronouncing it in the foreign language. And most people I know (including myself) would pronounce French words with their french spelling except those that have been completely anglicized (can’t think of any examples, right now). Full disclosure: I’m white, hispanic, and Canadian.
