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Correct pronunciation?


camillenparadise

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"...it was instantly appeared to me that she was speaking English..."

Oh yes. It was instantly appeared to me...sheesh.

I kinda liked it. :) You must admit that it is quite unusual, no? Very original and creative. :)

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There are affected young Mexican people who think it is cool to call Guadalajara Guad or San Cristobal de Las Casas San Cris. The people I have heard doing it, are people in their 30´s very impressed with themselves and wanting to be cool so maybe the trend is growing. If it is it is a shame as they are destroying some very beautiful names.I cringe everytime I hear Guad or San Cris.

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Languages simplify themselves all the times, languages that are not fexible and change become extinct.

Being a French speaker, I am in love by the way some languages sound and to me Guad and San Cris fall

flat and are ugly sounds..otherwise I have no opinion.

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I've lived in Guadalajara for years and have never heard a Mexican call it Guad,neither has my wife who was born here.

Maybe it's like when out-of-towners would call San Francisco "Frisco" which someone from there would never do, but I did hear my maintenance guy do it & my friend told me her husband does all the time. By the way, they live here, not in Guadalajara.

In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's a big deal & don't much care one way or the other.

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progress? change yes progress only future will tell.By the way I hear very few Mexicans say it and lots

of English speakers too lazy to pronounce the whole word or incapable of pronouncing anything over two

syllables

Do you think this happens a lot? I'm pretty sure most of us can pronounce more than two sylla... sylla... uh, big words...

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Maybe it's like when out-of-towners would call San Francisco "Frisco" which someone from there would never do, but I did hear my maintenance guy do it & my friend told me her husband does all the time. By the way, they live here, not in Guadalajara.

In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's a big deal & don't much care one way or the other.

You're probably right about the out of town aspect,I have heard some tapatios call it Guanatos.
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Yep, whenever I'm spelling my name for someone, I always have to specify which b/v I mean. (I'm sure it doesn't help that almost nobody here has heard my name before. :lol: )

Re Jocotepec. Yes, the accent is on the last syllable, but it's not heavy-handed or drawn out in anyway. I think for foreigners the real key to pronouncing it well is, as always, the correct pronunciation of the vowel sounds, and..... the rythmn of it. If you listen to a Mexican pronounce it, each syllable is given pretty much the same amount of time/weight. It's very staccato.

I pronounced it incorrectly and poorly for a long time, but then I really listened to it. Now I'm getting better.

Ah, "the correct pronunciation of the vowel sounds". People in Spanish classes here are taught to speak with American vowel sounds, thus, "gringo Spanish", almost unintelligible to Mexicans. To speak Spanish correctly, all one has to do is learn the sounds of the 5 major vowels - a, e, i, o, u. They each only have one sound, unlike American vowels. It's not pay-so, it's peh-so with a slight long "a" sound.

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People hear and say what they are used to hear. Most indigenous women call me vichil and my name is

Brigitte. Since I am older than any of them, I figured they called me" older sister" and I sometimes

answered them as "mukil" (younger sister)

Many of them cannot write so the spelling never was involved. One day a woman who could write thought she head something else so she asked me to write my name and we all had a good time when she told the other about my name being totally diferent from what they thought it was but the Vichil stuck.

So whenI hear that the indegenous pronounciation of a word is whatever I always have my doubts as adults are not able to pick up sounds they have not heard before and if they try they have to really practice . Depending on the sound, they may never hear it or be able to say it correctly.

No point worrying a whole lot if you have an accent as long as people can understand you.

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Ah, "the correct pronunciation of the vowel sounds". People in Spanish classes here are taught to speak with American vowel sounds, thus, "gringo Spanish", almost unintelligible to Mexicans. To speak Spanish correctly, all one has to do is learn the sounds of the 5 major vowels - a, e, i, o, u. They each only have one sound, unlike American vowels. It's not pay-so, it's peh-so with a slight long "a" sound.

In the two Spanish classes I attended, the very first thing we were taught was the Spanish pronunciation of vowel sounds, stressed as the most important thing we could ever start with. I cannot imagine any teacher doing otherwise.

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In the two Spanish classes I attended, the very first thing we were taught was the Spanish pronunciation of vowel sounds, stressed as the most important thing we could ever start with. I cannot imagine any teacher doing otherwise.

Amen. When I taught Spanish in Ajijic, that was always the starting point: vowel sounds.

  • A is ah
  • E is eh
  • I is ee
  • O is always OH as in orange
  • U is oooo as in oops

Always.

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I asked my vet friend in Guadalajara if he had heard fellow Tapatios say "Guad." His response was that he had never heard it called that in the city but that people from the lower class sometimes call it "Guanatos." He thinks "Fuad" is something made up here by expats at Lakeside to make it easier to say.

I do remember there was an opinion piece in one of the local publications maybe 5-6 years ago that essentially said "Do NOT call it Guad" and the premise was that native speakers, at least those from Guadalajara, never do that. Herb Caen wrote a book called "Don't Call It Frisco" about San Francisco in which he pretty much said the same thing about the City by the Bay. I googled why "Frisco" is offensive to some and the different opinions of whether it is acceptable or now is very interesting and seem to reflect some of the discussion here on the use of "Guad."

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Have to agree that people tend to not HEAR sounds that don't exist in their own language. My impression of what happens in many Spanish classes here is that while the vowel sounds are taught there is not much explanation of the sounds of the consonants, where they make certain sounds, and how to form those sounds in your mouth. Thus many learning Spanish still make the same sounds that consonant makes in English. They will probably be understood as Mexicans tend to be very sympathetic listeners and willing guessers. However a lack of comprehension often arises when these same students of Spanish hear the language spoken. They cannot associate the way a word is actually pronounced (with the correct sounds given to the consonants) with the words they have learned and how they themselves pronounce them. The goal of learning a language is always perfection because you never know when errors in structure, vocabulary or pronunciation will interfere with communication. But if you wait until you speak Spanish perfectly you will probably NEVER speak Spanish. And we can learn a lot from our errors.

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I asked my vet friend in Guadalajara if he had heard fellow Tapatios say "Guad." His response was that he had never heard it called that in the city but that people from the lower class sometimes call it "Guanatos."

Guanatos is a hipster term,it has nothing to do with lower or upper classes.
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Please explain what you mean by "hipster" term. Do you mean it is used by younger people? I'm just reporting what my Mexican Tapatio friend said about Guanatos. Interestingly in googling the use of "Frisco" it said that some of the younger generation call it "Frisco" while others called that name "gauche" and "ghetto talk." Perhaps "Guanatos" is somewhat the same.

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In the two Spanish classes I attended, the very first thing we were taught was the Spanish pronunciation of vowel sounds, stressed as the most important thing we could ever start with. I cannot imagine any teacher doing otherwise.

Then either they can't hear the Spanish vowels or don't practice what they're hearing or something happens when gringos get out of these classes! Because I mostly hear Americans speaking gringo Spanish with American vowels and it sounds awful.

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Please explain what you mean by "hipster" term. Do you mean it is used by younger people?

I think it's probably more commonly used by younger people,I first heard it from a friend who was a recent U de G grad.
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That seems to be the same people who are now using Frisco in San Francisco. According to some of what I read about the use of Frisco there are definitely those who consider it "ghetto" or "lower class" which I would say probably is how my Tapatio friend reacts to the use of "Guanatos." I would not call him a hipster and I'm just too old to be a hipster. I prefer to say Guadalajara instead of "Guad" or "Guanatos" because I won't most likely won't offend anyone or sound like I'm trying to be something I'm not (i.e. hip) when I'm speaking Spanish. But at least now I'll know what a hipster is saying, if I should encounter one.

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Los Angeles is L.A. Cincinnati is Cincy. Detroit is Motown. Chicago is Chi-town. Philadelphia is Philly. Boston is Beantown. St. Louis is St. Louie. New Orleans is the Big Easy. The list goes on and on and on. People from the United States use nicknames and abbreviations (with affection). Nobody from any of those fine cities would be offended by someone using the terms. The only people who get uptight about it are people from San Francisco, who also commonly refer to their region as "The Bay Area" (as if there is only one bay in the United States).

I am from Southern California and have lived and worked in San Francisco so I can call it whatever I want. I only ever used to refer to it as "Frisco" when I knew it would annoy someone, and I was in the mood to annoy them. It always worked. :lol:

I think people from the United States probably shorten Guadalajara to Guad out of simple habit. Of course, as foreigners in this country it's our responsibility to learn whether or not it's offensive, and if it is, we need to learn not to use it. I don't. No reason to. I can pronounce Guadalajara well enough.

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