The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Travis B.]

Interesting how this provides evidence for the hypothesis I read 20 years ago (and wish I could find again) that the default foreign language for English-speakers is shifting from French to Spanish.

(Another recent data point is a server's attempt to correct my pronunciation of mujaddara, a Middle Eastern lentil dish, to /mu:həˈdɑrə/.)

This may not have spread everywhere: I vividly recall going to a Mexican restaurant in a rural area of southern Virginia as a tween and overhearing somebody ordering [fə'dʒiɾəs]. But that was over a decade ago.

I am used to certain standard rules for pronouncing Spanish amongst English-speakers here; there are some rules that are pretty solid, such as that <j> is /h/, <ll> and <y> are /j/, <ñ> is /nj/, and <c> before <e> or <i> is /s/, while there are others that are looser, like that <e> can be any of /ɛ eɪ i/.

[anteallach]

Interesting how this provides evidence for the hypothesis I read 20 years ago (and wish I could find again) that the default foreign language for English-speakers is shifting from French to Spanish.

(Another recent data point is a server's attempt to correct my pronunciation of mujaddara, a Middle Eastern lentil dish, to /mu:həˈdɑrə/.)

More in the US than the UK, I suspect. I'd be very surprised to hear Rojava pronounced with /h/ here, and as the common UK pronunciations chorizo /tʃəˈrɪtsoʊ/ and Ibiza /aɪˈbiːθə/ indicate, we are capable of getting very confused by actual Spanish. The former suggests confusion with Italian, and the latter may be influenced by Catalan Eivissa but still seems deeply weird.

[Travis B.]

Two things that English-speakers here don't really Anglicize properly are <z> (which gets perenially pronounced as /z/) and <g> before <e> or <i> (where one would expect /h/ but instead most people pronounce with /dʒ/).

[Linguoboy]

Two things that English-speakers here don't really Anglicize properly are <z> (which gets perenially pronounced as /z/) and <g> before <e> or <i> (where one would expect /h/ but instead most people pronounce with /dʒ/).

Examples?

I can't really think of any Spanish borrowings with <gi> or <ge> in common use, but these combination occur often in names. Hearing *[dʒ]erardo instead of [h]erardo would be very unexpected and even jarring.

[Travis B.]

Two things that English-speakers here don't really Anglicize properly are <z> (which gets perenially pronounced as /z/) and <g> before <e> or <i> (where one would expect /h/ but instead most people pronounce with /dʒ/).

Examples?

I can't really think of any Spanish borrowings with <gi> or <ge> in common use, but these combination occur often in names. Hearing *[dʒ]erardo instead of [h]erardo would be very unexpected and even jarring.

Chori/z/o
Ar/dʒ/entina

[dhok]

Ar[h]entina would be affected to the point of silliness, at least in the US.

[Linguoboy]

Chori/z/o

I wasn't contesting the pronunciation of <z> as /z/ which is why it wasn't mentioned in my reply at all.

Ar/dʒ/entina

Except the name originates from Italian, not Spanish (and dates back to 1536, a century before Spanish even had a velar realisation of /x/).

[KathTheDragon]

Interesting how this provides evidence for the hypothesis I read 20 years ago (and wish I could find again) that the default foreign language for English-speakers is shifting from French to Spanish.

Presumably this is due to America being right next to Mexico.

[Linguoboy]

Interesting how this provides evidence for the hypothesis I read 20 years ago (and wish I could find again) that the default foreign language for English-speakers is shifting from French to Spanish.

Presumably this is due to America being right next to Mexico.

I think the tendency is present in British English, too. Spain is by far the most popular destination for UK holidaymakers. (According to the ONS, nearly twice as many folks from the UK travelled to Spain in 2018 as went to France.) The British Council predicts that, by next year, there will be more learners of Spanish than French in the UK.

[KathTheDragon]

Interesting. In which case, does this effect extend beyond America and the UK?

[Pabappa]

Sesame Street may have helped me get into Spanish, as where I grew up there were plenty of Portuguese speakers but not many Spanish. I took a French class when I was 7 yrs old but it didnt really seem to push me towards learning French. (It may have mattered that I was the only boy among 10 or so girls in the class, and the teacher was female as well, so I stuck out like a sore thumb and I was much too young and socially awkward to enjoy the attention.) Also it helped, Im sure , that Spanish was widely perceived as the easiest of the five six languages we were offered to study in school (the others were Portuguese, Greek, French, German, and Italian ... all of this reflects the ethnic makeup of where I was). The Spanish classes needed twice as many teachers as the others because they were so popular.

[Vijay]

Interesting. In which case, does this effect extend beyond America and the UK?

Maybe (Anglophone) Canada? Spanish seems to be much more widespread than French there, too.

[Linguoboy]

Interesting. In which case, does this effect extend beyond America and the UK?

I don't have enough data from elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Canada would be an interesting area to research: large native Francophone population, but highly geographically segregated (and widely resented), while also awash in Anglophone media from the USA. I can't even speculate about Australia.

[Salmoneus]

Interesting how this provides evidence for the hypothesis I read 20 years ago (and wish I could find again) that the default foreign language for English-speakers is shifting from French to Spanish.

Presumably this is due to America being right next to Mexico.

I think the tendency is present in British English, too. Spain is by far the most popular destination for UK holidaymakers. (According to the ONS, nearly twice as many folks from the UK travelled to Spain in 2018 as went to France.) The British Council predicts that, by next year, there will be more learners of Spanish than French in the UK.

Yeah, but people who go on holiday to Spain are for obvious reasons only a tiny fraction as likely to actually learn any other language as those who go on holiday to France (which is already a small percentage).

Perhaps it may change in future, but right now, I think British people in general don't have the slightest clue how to pronounce Spanish, and it tends to be pronounced with an amalgamation of French and Italian rules. The rule that 'ju' = /w/ seems to have stuck, due to the number of Spanish footballers called 'Juan' and the like, and 'j' by itself is sometimes /h/ (or /j/, or /Z/, or...). But not a lot beyond that. I've heard 'chorizo' with /k/, /tS/, /S/ or /x/ for the first consonant, and virtually always heard it with /z/ for the final one.

Moreover, I don't think there's any tendency to pronounce non-Spanish names of people or places as though they were Spanish (with the exception occasionally of Portuguese names, because most people can't immediately spot the difference). For instance, the 'j' in 'Azerbaijan' can be /j/, /Z/ or /dZ/, but never /h/.

[dhok]

If <j> is in a name that doesn't "look Spanish", it's generally /ʒ/ as in French, at least in the US. Both /ɑzəɹbaɪ'ʒɑn/ and /beɪ'ʒɪŋ/ are pronounced by the locals with affricates, not a fricative. So Americans seem to have internalized a rule that words that "look Spanish" have one set of pronunciation rules where <j> is /h/, and others have a different one where it's /ʒ/. (But what's Rio de Janeiro for Americans? I've heard /ʒə'neɪɾoʊ/ but not /hə'neɪroʊ/--maybe people have heard the latter.)

Regarding /beɪ'ʒɪŋ/: the current President of China's personal name is usually pronounced /dʒɪn'pɪŋ/. This could be due to a growing awareness of Chinese romanization conventions--on the other hand my father pronounces his family name /ʒi/, as /ʒi dʒɪn'pɪŋ/. I assume <z> is usually pronounced /z/.

What is the normal, not-particularly-informed pronunciation of Pinyin <q>? <zh> is usually /ʒ/--/gwɑŋ'ʒoʊ/ or /gwaŋ'ʒaʊ/--though I've also heard /z/. I don't know about <c>, perhaps because by coincidence relative few Chinese placenames or personal names seem to have it. (For fun, try and think of a Chinese city that has <c> [not <ch>] without looking. None appear in the top fifty by population.)

[Pabappa]

Canton is still a valid city name, right? But I get that that's not what you meant.

As for out-of-place /h/, I heard a radio host say "Josiah" with an /h/. And maybe a few people read the Biblical name Jabez the same way.

[Kuchigakatai]

What is the normal, not-particularly-informed pronunciation of Pinyin <q>? <zh> is usually /ʒ/--/gwɑŋ'ʒoʊ/ or /gwaŋ'ʒaʊ/--though I've also heard /z/. I don't know about <c>, perhaps because by coincidence relative few Chinese placenames or personal names seem to have it. (For fun, try and think of a Chinese city that has <c> [not <ch>] without looking. None appear in the top fifty by population.)

I have heard people with some interest in world history talk about the Qin /kɪn/ and Qing /kɪŋ/ dynasties. The common family names 曲 Qū, 屈 Qū and 瞿 Qú also get written Qu and pronounced /ku/, as in the infamous Mandarin singer and mistress of Vancouver's mayor 曲婉婷 Qū Wǎntíng, i.e. Wanting Qu /ˈwæntɪŋ ˈku/.

"C" appears most frequently in the family name 蔡 Cài. See also: the 2nd/3rd-century warlord (post-humously "emperor") and antagonist of Romance of the Three Kingdoms 曹操 Cáo Cāo, and his son and successor 曹丕 Cáo Pī. TBH I haven't heard these names pronounced by people without at least some basic knowledge of pinyin.

Before "i", the letter "c" becomes /s/ of course, as in the name of the famous science fiction author 刘慈欣 Liú Cíxīn, i.e. Cixin Liu /səˈʃɪn ˈlu, səˈkɪn/ (I once heard someone say /ˈsikn/ "seek-n" too).

[Vijay]

[roˈʒɑvɑ]

Incidentally, in Kurdish itself, this is the correct pronunciation except that the stress is on the last syllable (and apparently the second syllable is longer?).

EDIT:

What is the normal, not-particularly-informed pronunciation of Pinyin <q>?

[t͡ʃʰ]

[Linguoboy]

What is the normal, not-particularly-informed pronunciation of Pinyin <q>?

I don't know that there is one. In addition to the values already mentioned, I've sporadically seen folks interpolate a <u> and pronounce it /kw/.

[Travis B.]

ask
literally (my daughter gets this one down to two syllables)

In particular I was wondering if any one else had /æs/ for ask in informal speech...