Pronunciation

[Mr KillKill]

Recently I was listening to the radio and they were talking about Don Quixote and the announcer kept pronouncing the name as “Don Quicks-Tey”.
At first I didn’t understand what she was on about until she advised that they have an argument in the studio as to how the name is pronounced each time the name is mentioned and that “Don Quicks-Tey” was the anglicized version.
“Don Key-Ho-Tey” is the way I have heard the name pronounced all my life so I don’t understand the reasoning behind the change, as far as I’m concerned, you can have an equivalent but not an anglicized version. For example, the Spanish (Latin?) name Jose (pronounced Ho-Say) is the equivalent of the English name Joseph (pronounced Joe-Sef). Therefore, because of the two different languages, you end up with two different versions both in spelling and pronunciation even though it is technically still the same name.
Don Quixote, to my knowledge, is purely a Spanish name and has no English equivalent, if it did and we were to pronounce it differently, wouldn’t it at least be spelt differently?
“Anglicizing” a word or name simply by emphasizing a certain letter does not make it anglicized, it simply makes the pronunciation incorrect. Like I said, you can have an equivalent but this “anglicizing” business seems ridiculous to me.
Thoughts anyone

 

[senojekips]

Language, and pronunciation are a bloody mystery.

One word will be anglicised another not, seemingly without rhyme or reason. You gave the example of Jose, which I think most of us would pronounce as you said "Ho-say", yet so many other names, particularly place names are Anglicised both in spelling and pronunciation, e.g. Roma, we say Rome, Moskva we say Moscow, neither of which have been Anglicised because of inability to be pronounced in their adoptive languages. Then there are such anomalies as "Paris" which we write the same but pronounce differently.

Generally I just accept the principle of saying the name or word with the pronunciation that I feel will be best understood by my current audience.

It's the old Tom'ah'to Tom'ay'to, Pot'ah'to Pot'ay'to argument. You can always fall back on the argument, "Well, that's how we say it where I come from":mrgreen:

 

[84RFK]

Hmm....back in school I was told that it's pronounced "Don Qi-shot" or even "Don Qi-sho" by several teachers..

 

[Mr KillKill]

Hmm in retrospect I concede you both make valid points that there will always be different pronunciations, its just that when you hear something pronounced a certain way for 40yrs its hard to accept someone coming along and saying “No no, its pronounced like this”
My favourite gripe is the word Porsche but again, tomato potato :wink: