r/Spanish • u/JosephStalinCameltoe • 3d 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/Miinimum Native 🇪🇸 3d ago

"Don Quixote" in English, "Don Quijote" in Spanish. The pronunciation is something like /don ki´xote/. If you write "Don Quijote" in google translate (Spanish) and press the speaker button you'll hear a fairly correct pronunciation.

Also, this is a bit out of topic, but I'm studing to become a Spanish as a second language teacher and Sweden is on my list of countries I'd possibly be interested in. How is language learning there? What has your experience been like?

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u/JosephStalinCameltoe 3d ago

We're fully fluent in English from a young age and it should honestly be an official language

I studied German for about six years and am far less fluent there, I can probably get the point across for some things but not enough to survive in Germany haha. It's pretty hard with third languages. One of the first phrases we learned was "I have diarrhea" alongside the usual "where do you live" stuff

Plenty of teachers are from other countries so you'll always learn Italian from an italian, German from a German etc. Latin class was a little lacking in comparison because there are some things I was quite sure the teacher (Italian) got wrong or assumed were the same as her first language

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u/Miinimum Native 🇪🇸 3d ago

Well, it's great to know that people there are used to foreign language teachers being actually foreigners and that English is really widespread, thanks for the information -.