Yesus wept
What do jalapeños, fajitas, Majorca and Juventus have in common?
I was in Subway getting a sandwich the other day, and someone in front of me in
the queue was asked if he wanted any jalapenos on his sandwich. Oh "ja-lapenos" (he said stressing the J at the start of the word so that it was pronounced the same way as in 'jam').
The girl behind the counter said "yes, jalapenos" (pronouncing the word correctly), whilst rolling her eyes.
I heard someone order fajitas as well not so long ago, again insisting that the 'j' should be pronounced as in jam.
They must hear people pronounce these words correctly, and then choose to ignore the correct pronunciation. Surely no one says Majorca with a hard 'j' anymore, although it wouldn't surprise me?
Andy Gray often refers to Juventus with a hard 'j', and he's not the only one. Kevin Keegan does exactly the same. Again they must hear people pronounce Juve or Juventus correctly and choose to ignore that they are the ones who are wrong?
The same people who insist on the hard 'j' incorrectly, also seem to be the same ones who insist on calling José Mourinho - 'Hosé' as it would be pronounced in Spansh, but not in Portuguese. Do they take delight in getting it wrong and making themselves sound less intelligent? Is it something they work hard at?
Talking of 'pronunciation' I am hearing more and more people mispronounce it so that it sounds like pronounce-iation. It isn't even spelt like that, so why do they insist on mangling the English language so?
5 Comments so far
Leave a comment
The José Mourinho one is a bit unfair though as it’s not so common knowledge for how the Portuguese pronounce their Js. Most people know the Spanish and assume it must be the same, which is fair enough in most cases. At least they’re trying!
By Bev on 06.02.08 12:43 pm
That would be OK when he first became news - but it’s the ones who correct people who say José and tell them it’s Hosé - despite the fact that everyone else is pronouncing it correctly.
By Daniel on 06.02.08 12:47 pm
But how do they know which is the correct way to pronounce it? Until someone told me the Portugese rules for pronouncing J as H then I was going round correcting people who said José. In my mind the people I was correcting were the same people who say Majorca with a J, i.e. uninformed. That is to say, they weren’t better informed than me, they were just ignorant of the correct pronounciation and getting lucky, as it were.
hope that makes sense.
By Bev on 06.03.08 1:02 pm
Nah - lots of people just don’t want to learn.
By Daniel on 06.03.08 1:04 pm
You mean “hust don’t want to learn.”
By Ian on 06.18.08 4:58 pm
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>