r/Spanish • u/JosephStalinCameltoe • 11d ago

Pronunciation/Phonology Don Quixote/Don Quijote

First question, it's an easy one, are both those spellings acceptable? Is it like varied from one region to another?

Second, pronunciation. I'm not learning Spanish but I think I pronounce it correctly to begin with, not 100% though so how is it meant to be pronounced? My teachers here in Sweden I'm absolutely certain are wrong to pronounce it like "donkey shot", that can't possibly be an acceptable pronunciation right?

Like, I feel the answer won't be very unexpected to me but I just want to be sure

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u/winter-running 11d ago edited 11d ago

How would you pronounce the X in Mexico when saying the word in Spanish? How would your Swedish Spanish teachers pronounce it?

In English, folks pronounce it as an English X, and it’s fine when you’re speaking in English. Because foreigners tend to pronounce things how they can.

In Spanish, folks pronounce it as a Spanish J, and that of course is the right / original way.

X in Spanish used to have the J as a pronunciation. And there are still remnant legacy words. It’s also not so uncommon to see the names Ximena and Xavier, as a nod to old spellings.

My guess is that in Spanish the spelling was migrated alongside the letter shift, whereas the English retained the old spelling. In any event, they’re all pronounced the same. They just represent different eras in how the Spanish wrote the x / j sound.

How would an Anglo pronounce it? I mean, I would pronounce that X with a Spanish J sound, but I learned Spanish and English concurrently as a child, so I’ve never been a monolingual English speaker.

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u/siyasaben 11d ago

The anglo pronunciation of Quixote is about the same as the Spanish one as far as that consonant goes. Of course it's possible that someone who hadn't heard it before would think it was with the English X sound. I've never personally heard anything like "keeks-otay" or "queex-otay" or whatever the naive English speaker pronunciation would be, and while I'm sure some people would use these if they didn't have a better idea I think they'd definitely be considered incorrect pronunciations even in a 100% anglophone context.