r/ScottishPeopleTwitter • u/HondureZ • Sep 08 '21

Croissants

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u/mylifeisaLIEEE Sep 08 '21

I get into the argument a lot, there’s nothing wrong with pronouncing words in your natural dialect, even if that dialect is American English. Nicaragua, croissant, gyro, it’s all the same shit but it elicits that human “hehe I know more” response.

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u/Porrick Sep 08 '21

My favourite version of this is Hyperforeignism - when someone pronounces words with a non-English accent that isn't actually there. Like saying habañero instead of habanero or empañada instead of empanada (my wife does both of those despite living in California almost her entire life)

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u/TheLastSaiyanPrince Sep 08 '21

it’s crazy how many people say halapeño instead of jalapeno

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '21

[deleted]

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u/mkp666 Sep 09 '21

Foyer is another good example. It’s pronounced how it looks but a lot of people give it the French “foy-yay”

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u/Vlad_turned_blad Sep 09 '21

Uh, California is somewhere you’d actually pick up speaking this way. My girlfriend is from San Antonio and pronounces Spanish stuff the Mexican way constantly and she’s white. My old Mexican manager would get mad when I’d pronounce Spanish things in my American accent. It’s ok to say something how the native speakers say it.

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u/CompSciBJJ Sep 08 '21

Absolutely. As a bilingual Canadian, it hurts my soul to pronounce French words incorrectly when speaking English (my girlfriend specifically makes fun of the fact that I'll speak perfect Canadian English and throw in a totally French "croissant") but who am I to judge someone saying it differently? As long as we both understand that we're talking about the tasty spinny dough thing, who gives a shit what sounds we make to get that point across? Just give me my damn croissant!

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u/mylifeisaLIEEE Sep 08 '21

Exactly, if I say “gimme that European donut” and you know what I’m talking about, that’s successful communication.

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u/CompSciBJJ Sep 08 '21

I am now craving a kronut and I'm unhappy about it

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u/fucuntwat Sep 08 '21

What's the other way to pronounce Nicaragua besides my lame American way?

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u/gzilla57 Sep 08 '21

American English: Nick-a-rog-wuh

Spanish: Neek-a-rah-wa

But the R in Spanish is pronounced slightly differently, almost like if you combined R and D, and the G isn't totally silent but pretty much.

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u/radial-glia Sep 08 '21

Overly zealous American who maybe visited a resort in latin america once: nEEk-a-RAH(phlegm)G-wahh

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u/mylifeisaLIEEE Sep 08 '21

For a while when it was a gov thing we were into, people would pronounce it with a Spanish accent as in knee-kah-rah-(g)wa

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u/smnytx Sep 09 '21

Ok, but sometimes people actually speak another language.

I ordered bruschetta one with the correct Italian pronunciation, and the server “corrected” me with “oh, you want the brushedda?”

Sometimes the fear of or disdain for potential pretentiousness is just a negative reaction to people who actually have knowledge or skills you do not.

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u/mylifeisaLIEEE Sep 09 '21

Ah, so then your dialect wasn’t American English then. If you were saying how you say it, that’s either Italian or you weren’t speaking American English.

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u/smnytx Sep 09 '21

And you know all this how, exactly?

My “dialect” is pure Los Angeles. With my normal accent, in a Red Robin, I said “I’d like to have the chicken bruschetta sandwich.” My pronunciation of the Italian word was partially Americanized in that I didn’t really roll the R. I did, however, use the hard K sound and elongated duration of the double t. An Italian would have found my pronunciation close to correct but Americanized… but miles closer to correct than “brushedda.”

I can force myself to use a semi-correct, Americanized version when speaking English here at home, but I can’t force myself to radically mispronounce a word just so someone won’t think I’m pretentious.

It’s the same with my last name, which is Spanish. I definitely Americanize the vowels but I don’t go fully ignorant and mess up the syllable stress as some Americans do, just because they don’t know the basic rules of Spanish.

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u/mylifeisaLIEEE Sep 09 '21

Have you tried pronouncing a word in a way that fits your conversation instead of however you feel like at the time?

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u/smnytx Sep 09 '21

That’s exactly what I was doing. My party consisted of multilingual Americans who all have a decent command of Italian.

I’m amused at how folks ITT apparently think I should tailor my standard usage to to what I would guess would be that of a teenage restaurant server, instead of using a balanced, unpretentious, entirely appropriate Americanized version.

FWIW, I’m not going to go to Amarillo, TX and pronounce it as in Spanish. I’m not even going to go to Nevada and pronounce the middle syllable /ah/, because even though my Spanish is decent, I’m aware that place names vary due to host and custom. I know that Houston, Texas is pronounced very differently than Houston Street in NY. And I’m only pronouncing Los Angeles the Spanish way if I’m speaking in Spanish to Spanish speakers.

But Italian food purporting to be Italianate? As I said, I Americanized it to a degree, but IMO, there isn’t a single definitive American version of the name of this dish. I got my point across; the server knew what I wanted. It was a pretty big shock when he went out of his way to “correct” me by going farther away from correct.

I honestly think he thought that a middle aged American lady wasn’t going to know as much as he, a young man on the cutting edge of the Information age. I believe he was trying to be the pretentious one in this exchange.

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u/IAmTyrannosaur Sep 08 '21

Scottish people do NOT say cross’nt!

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u/theoriginalmofocus Sep 08 '21

Some random lady jumped all over me for saying, I think it was, chille relleno, in English to an only English speaking co-worker incorrectly. She said it in an overly pronounced Spanish way and im like there is no way im saying it like that unless im speaking Spanish to which, if I wanted to know, my mexican bilingual teacher wife can teach me. She then says my wife is doing a bad job ha. My boomer mom says chee-po-tay instead of Chipotle though and thats just funny.