What's going on, Albuquerque?
Birky, not BurKAY
Everytime I open DCF, there is squats in the upper right corner: "Burque doesn't rhyme with quirky." In a starburst yet. Yes, it's true. Burque doesn't rhyme with quirky. But Albuquerque does. It's not AlbuquerKAY. Why does the Alibi and DCF persist in trying to coin this awkward neologism? Too many syllables in the original for ya? And don't tell me that a hundred years ago they dropped the first R in Alburquerque. That was evolution, not contrivance.
Then there's Bosque. Like Albuquerque, it doesn't have a hard 'O' unless you're a rich Anglo émigré to Santa Fe (which does rhyme) or a "local" broadcast personality from who knows where. Are they trying to sound more Spanish while speaking English? Ask anyone who grew up here or anyone from Bosque Farms: It's Bosky, not Boe-skay.
If you want withering scorn from a local in San Francisco, just call it Frisco.
Can we do any less?
Evidently.
End of Rant. Whew. Got that one off my chest.
Next?
Then there's Bosque. Like Albuquerque, it doesn't have a hard 'O' unless you're a rich Anglo émigré to Santa Fe (which does rhyme) or a "local" broadcast personality from who knows where. Are they trying to sound more Spanish while speaking English? Ask anyone who grew up here or anyone from Bosque Farms: It's Bosky, not Boe-skay.
If you want withering scorn from a local in San Francisco, just call it Frisco.
Can we do any less?
Evidently.
End of Rant. Whew. Got that one off my chest.
Next?
Views: 69
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Stephanie James on -
Never heard "hor-ez" LOL
We called it "Wazoo" when I was down at State. Now we can call it "war zone" since the US is closing the consulate there.
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Permalink Reply by John on -
Yesh Joyzy, you better not head up to the rural northern parts of the state. People up there will give you the evil eye if you don't pronounce town names in Spanish. Seriously - call Chamisal "cha-ME-zul" rather than "cha-me-SAL" and people will immediately correct you. And don't dare say "es-PAN-o-la" instead of "es-pahn-YO-la". And say "tay-os" rather than "tows" (a friend of mine actually did that) and no one will know what you're talking about.
And besides, "al-buh-ker-keh" (not "al-buh-ker-KAY") is the proper Spanish pronunciation - assuming my Spanish class is correct. Our teacher didn't tell us "Por que?" is pronounced "por-ky". It was "por-keh".
I'm an Anglo, so your beef seems to be directed at people like me who you think are trying to be hipsters - trust me, it's not to be hip. It's to avoid the scorn.
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Permalink Reply by RebLem on -
I suggest there isn't a wide chasm here, particularly, but a continuum of pronunciations and sensibilities. I am an Anglo who moved here Feb. 2002 from Chicago. But I first visited New Mexico in 1958 when, on a family vacation when I was 16, we just drove through Albuquerque on Rte 66 without stopping, except maybe for lunch, after having spent the night in Tucumcari. The next time I came here was a bit longer, in 1963. My sister is two year younger than I, and went to UNM right out of high school. I worked for two years after high school and started going to Northwest Missouri State College (now Univeristy) in Maryville, MO at the same time she went to UNM, so my parents made a family vacation out of taking us to school. (Don't laugh about my alma mater, btw, Steve Stucker graduated from there, too.) The next time was when my sister got married the year she graduated, and then there was a long hiatus until the early 1990's, when my parents moved to Albuquerque, and I would come out for Christmas. I retired early in 1999, and moved out here permanently 2/02.
I speak only English, though I have made at least two abortive attempts to learn Spanish. In addition, I had contact with lots of Spanish speaking people in Chicago because I was a public aid caseworker there for 31 years, and many of my clients and colleagues were Spanish speakers, particularly for the last 18 years, when I worked at the Uptown District Office, which serves a port of entry community for immigrants from all over the world. And it was a POE for lots of native born US citizens coming to Chicago for the first time, whether from reservations, Appalachia, or Puerto Rico, or NYC or Detroit. It was the POE for every minority that was too small to have a ghetto of its own, plus a lot that did--Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Nepalese, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Indians, Afghans from both sides of the civil war, you name it.
So, I try to be sensitive. I do say PAYcos for Pecos, and a few other things that have been complained about, but lots of Anglo mangling of Spanish really grates on even me. The absolute worst to me is "Rio Grand (as in grand piano) River," as if you have to indicate its a river a second time in English to make it official. I say Albuquerque with "Albu" rhyming with Jessica Alba, and querque rhyming with turkey, and with descending degrees of emphasis on every syllable--the biggest emphasis being on AL, a secondary emphasis on bu (buh), a tertiary emphasis on tur (just as in turkey), and the least emphasis on que, as in turkey. I tend to pronounce Bosque as BAHski. Juarez as WAHRez. My guess is that Sahuarita is pronounced sah hwah REE tuh. I know enough to place the emphasis on the SAL in Chamisal.
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Permalink Reply by RebLem on
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Ah, I thought if something else, too late to add it as a question after the above post. How do you pronounce the county just north of us? Is it SAN doh voll, as I suppose, or is in san do VAL?
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Permalink Reply by Adelita on -
Since I am a Sandoval I can tell you it is pronounced san-do-VAL making sure the "A" is more like the A sound in the word vault. I don't know if I described that very well...
I
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Permalink Reply by Matt on -
This post would have kind of annoyed me, were it not for the wonderful replies that it generated...
- I grew up in San Diego. There's a community called La Jolla there (you might have heard of it). That's Hoya.. There's another common name in the area - Jamacha. We always laughed when a new traffic reporter came to town and they pronounced it Jam a chuh (it should be Ham-a-shaw, or similar).
- Picking on pronunciation points to a larger issue - picking on someone. Others referred to this. Mispronunciation can be interpreted as disrespect in a variety of ways.. Like, "you don't care enough about me (or my place/people) to learn to say things the way we do." Or, "you're trying to say that word like the locals do so that you can feel like a local. But you aren't a local, so say it like an outsider."
Some people have a tough time learning their own language (or their limited vocabulary). That's not necessarily a slam on their brain size, but a recognition that peoples' talents lie in different places. Some people pick up dialect easily. Some people struggle. Some people give up. Some people don't give a crap. If someone that I already think is a jerk, mispronounces something (arguably a subjective thing), it just confirms what I already think of them. If someone that I like mispronounces something, I usually just kind of laugh..
In studying a fair amount of Spanish, and a bit of French, I have found that I can sometimes seem to sound a bit better if I attempt to "channel" a native speaker of the language. Mimic their mannerisms as well as just trying to say the words. This, in and of itself, might come off as disrespectful, but getting in-character can be a useful exercise.
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Permalink Reply by Dome Duck on -
I just wish I could have a recording of Maya Angelou pronouncing Albuquerque. It is a thing of beauty I hope to hear again someday!
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Permalink Reply by Barelas Babe on -
She will be here this fall! (I have already purchased my tickets.)
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Permalink Reply by Ben Moffett on -
It's good to remember that Spanish has more letters in its alphabet than English does. The ch in Jamacha is pronounced differently than the c and follows it in alphabetical order. A Trib reporter once went to Spain and reported back that there were no Chavez surnames in the phone book. He/she was inundated with mail because the ch surnames were in alphabetical order following the c words. Other words that are different are double r (rr) which follows r, the tilde n after the regular n, and the double L after the single L. But notice Jamacha above. The ch makes it the same as the dance, the cha-cha, different from the c as in cigarro. With Jamacha, you can't let your eyes play a trick on you and consider the c the last letter in the second syllable, because ch is the first letter of the third syllable. If you did that, you'd have Ha-MOCK-a or something approximating that. What messes up non Spanish speakers is the spelling. All those Anglo baseball announcers wouldn't have any trouble pronouncing Perez if they just thought of it as the English surname Pettis (perfect or so close nobody could pick it up). Both Perez and Pettis require stress on the first syllable. As for Jolla (above), it would be fine to use the nickname of the Georgetown team (Hoya) as the last word in La Jolla. Or so I believe.
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Permalink Reply by hettie on -
eee, you paid me back already! (this comes from a goofy joke from my placitas elementary days--sad I can't remember how the set-up actually goes.)
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Permalink Reply by slamwagon on -
Ah... childhood.
A unique experience as a result of being raised in NM? Maybe.
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Permalink Reply by toddster on -
This is one thing I love about New Mexico, the Spanish language gets a bit more respect than it does in, say, Texas.
I drove to Austin to visit a friend last year, and mentioned we went through the town of Llano (which, not knowing any "better", I pronounced "Yano") and she corrected me and said "oh, they call that "LAN-o (rhymes with "MAN-o"), I know, it's awful". I asked if we should take Guadalupe St. to UT (using the pronunciation we would use in NM) and she cringed and said "here they call it Guada-LOOP" (she is not from Texas and has taught in Guatemala and she finds it all kind of embarrassing)... and this kind of thing kept coming up. It drove home some of the cultural differences between the two states.
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