THE CONFUSION OF SPANISH PRONUNCIATION - By Spanish-speking people

From March 2 to 6, 2010, coinciding with Chile's bicentennial, and

just before the end of the Bachelet administration, the Vth

International Congress of the Spanish Language (known by its Spanish

acronym CILE) will be held in Valparaiso, next door to my adopted

Chilean abode. The King of Spain himself will be attending, to jointly

inaugurate the proceedings together with president Bachelet. I do not

know if there is a call for papers, but in any case I want to bring my

modest contribution to the debates at an early stage. This paper aims

at pointing out some inconsistencies in Spanish pronunciation, both in

Chile and elsewhere. Let me make it very clear that it is not about

accent, intonation, dialects or "modismos". It is about the utter

confusion in how to pronounce given letters. It is a fact that Spanish

is not the only language with alternative pronunciations. English for

one is notorious as to the various ways that the combination "gh" is

pronounced. However, the various options each relate to specific words

and once you have a certain proficiency in English, you should know

what is pronounced how, because the word is always pronounced that

same way. In Spanish, it has often become a lottery.

AB UOVO The supervisory and standard-setting body related to the use

and abuse of the Spanish language is Spain's Real Academia Española,

(RAE) founded in 1713, with the remit of "fixing the sounds and words

of the Spanish language in its utmost customs, elegance and purity".

Since then, it has had to open up to Spanish usage in the rest of the

Hispanic world, and is now at the head of a federation of 23 national

academies, including the USA and the Philippines.

Each academy has of course its own local membership (the Chilean one

alone has 33, and for the anecdote, elected as an honorary member,

during the military government, Pope John Paul II, proving once again

that in Chile, even in such matters, who you are is the only important

criteria), and the Real Academia also has 38 non-Hispanic

correspondent individual members from as far away as Japan, Russia and

Finland. Its main activity is to keep up to date its Spanish

dictionary, a flagship publication which is now in its twenty-second

edition. It is also available online (www.rae.es). The academy also

issues ad hoc rulings on specific expressions and words.

At some stage during its 295-year history, the RAE took a number of

decisions which have seriously affected both the ability of

Spanish-speaking people to pronounce and spell their own language, as

well as properly speaking foreign ones.

One of those decisions is that foreign words would be pronounced as if

they were Spanish ones. Once you get that habit into your system, and

have it constantly rammed down your throat by the media, it is very

difficult to revert to the proper pronunciation once you try to learn

a foreign language.

The other extraordinary move was to declare that three combinations of

letters, namely "ch", "ll" and "rr" were letters in their own right.

To the rest of us, they are not a letter but TWO letters, whose

combination makes something we know as a "sound".

Why restrict themselves to those three? What about other combinations:

sh, ts, nn, mm, cr etc? No obvious reason. Having spent over 36 years

as an analyst, first of Spain, and subsequently of Latin America, I

know that Cartesian behavioural questions in that part of the world

only generate frustration.

To be fair, some years ago the RAE did backtrack on that decision, and

decided that they were not independent letters any more, and that

words starting with "ch" would figure after those starting with "cg"

and before those starting with "ci", rather than at the very end. This

was not an easy task. The Guatemalans opposed the move, blocking the

whole procedure for a long time. The end result is that directories,

lists and classifications in the Hispanic world are now a free for all

without any set rule as to precedence. Some have the "ch" where it

should be. Others still have it at the end, including the phone

directories issued by TELEFONICA, a company once the property of the

Kingdom of Spain. Therefore, when a foreigner wishes to look up a name

in a Spanish directory, it is not at all obvious where they should be

looking.

Last but not least, though I am not sure if the RAE bears the

responsibility for it, the Hispanic world is unable to differentiate

between the "b" and the "v", concluding that they were two variations

of the same letter, and almost interchangeable. More about this

"barbaridad" (or should I say "varvaridad", later.

THE PROBLEM OF "CH" (and "SH") In Arabic, there are for instance

three different letters with variations of the sound "s" , from weak

to strong. In Russian, there are different letters for the sounds ch,

sh, shch & ts. In the Hispanic world, there is utter confusion.

Let us start with the "sh". If, as in the case in my half-Spanish

household, you are an habitué of Spanish TV by cable, you often hear

that president "Buss" has gone from "Wassington" to "SSangai", but he

had stopped smoking "hassiss". Why cannot their news readers,

together with most of the Iberian population, notice that there is an

"h" after the "s", so just possibly, it is not pronounced as if it was

just an "s". Answers on a postcard please.

Back in Chile, many people pretend the country they live in is

"Tsile". It would be consistent, even if wrong, should they always

pronounce "ch" as "ts", but when they refer to the cook in the

restaurant, he is a "tcheff", possibly preparing a meal of "sutchi".

Admittedly, the "ch" combination is a stronger sound than the "sh"

one, but in no way does it have a silent "t" before it, nor is the "c"

pronounced as an "s".

THE "B" & THE "V", THE "J" AND OTHER LETTERS I have no statistics as

to how many native Hispanics speak Chinese so well as to be unable to

distinguish their not being Chinese on the phone (my sister is thus

fluent in Japanese, by the way). If the rara avis exists, it must be

in minute quantities, because if they cannot differentiate between the

"b" and "v" sounds, then chances that they can master the three or

four different intonations of Chinese sounds are as good as nil. Qué

carajo does it mean to say "b grande" and "v chica". Grande tu

estupidez y chica tu mente, pues!!

The consequences are to be seen everywhere. Badly spelt words on

public signs and in the media, incorrect identity documents, and wrong

transliteration of foreign words. I am afraid that this is now a

congenital ailment about which nothing can be done.

The fate of the "j" is another headache, particularly in Chile.

Strictly speaking, its correct Spanish pronunciation is "kh", but when

"adapting" it to local taste, the Chileans think it is in German. You

thus have people called "Yonatan" and "Yenifer .

The worst aspect of it is that civil registry officers accept such

mistakes, whereas they should be the last line of defence against

them, telling the father "o lo deletrea correctamente o su hijo queda

sin registro, en calidad de "vastardo" (como su padre, pues).

Then we have the problem of the "h", and not only in Chile. In strict

ruling, the "h" in Spanish is in general silent. However, when

pronouncing foreign words starting with "h", instead of the weak "he"

that should come out, most Hispanics decide that it is a "j",

pronounced correctly. You thus have a "khappening" when Manchester

City beats West "Kham" at football. You may have noticed that they do

not even follow their own stupid rule to pronounce foreign words as if

they were written in Spanish.

Let us end this non-exhaustive sample with the end letters, "x" and

"z". In Spain, they tend to pronounce the "x" also as if it were an

"s", though the rule book says it should be pronounced "ks". Thus you

cannot differentiate in conversation between "sexo" (sex) and "seso"

(brains), a situation which must have some moral tale in it.

In Chile, the same fate awaits the "z", whether single or double, and

makes Italy's famous dish as revised by American cooks, "Pis"a or

"pissa".

PHANTOM LETTERS I have a lot of problems with my name in Chile. No

wonder, I hear you say. Funnily enough, I have more problems with

"Armen" than with "Kouyoumdjian". There are people who think it is a

spelling mistake and write back to me as "Carmen" (that included

Joaquin Lavin's presidential campaign team in 1999, a waste of time as

I am not registered to vote). They are not the worst offenders.

When I give my name on the phone in Chile, I try the method you use

with small children or mentally impaired people. I tell them it is

spelt like "Carmen", but minus the "C". No use. They answer back

calling me "Harmen" or "Kharmen". Excuse me!! Did I mention an "h"? Do

you see an "h" written before the "a" in invisible ink, which only the

NSA can detect? Why can't you just say plain and simple, "Armen"?

(Porque somos unos Guebones, pues !).

The mystery of why Spaniards refer to the capital of Iraq as "Bagdag"

is another example of confused pronunciation. Is there also a problem

of vocal similarity between the "g" and the "d"?

PRETENTIOUSLY WRONG MENUS (AND FOOTBALL CLUBS) It would be a waste of

time to cite all the mis-spelt foreign words in menus, whether written

up in the poshest Santiago hotel (the one offering "amouse bouche",

and I found out subsequently that the guy in charge of its restaurants

is a native Frenchman!), or described in the gastronomic reviews of

its main newspapers.

Getting back to the rule about pronouncing foreign words as if they

were written in Spanish, it obviously does not apply to Chilean

football clubs. They are two such clubs in Chile, among several with

an English name, that are the subject of pronunciation vandalism. One

is "Rangers" and the other "Wanderers".

Now, if you pronounced "Rangers" in the English way, it would be

"randjers", and if you pronounce it as a Spanish word, it would be

"rankhers or ranghers". However, despite superhuman efforts I made

among my Chilean media friends, most of them still continue to refer

to it with a strong "g" as in "banger".

Wanderers is a word with three syllables, but the Chilean media

decided that it only had two, so it is pronounced "Wanders". It means

something completely different in English.

OUR FRIEND "GUISHERMO" FROM CNN I shall not attempt a thorough

analysis of Argentine pronunciation. My cultural battle in that

country is much more profound, and consists in trying to have Astor

Piazzolla's grave transformed into a public toilet. How could a

passionate and restless people like the Argentines stay silent, and

let that man destroy one of the pillars of their culture, the

classical sung tango, and transform it into some kind of techno tune

revised by Moby? He should be declared a traitor to the nation, have

all his inheritance confiscated, and his family expelled from the

country, whilst banning any public or private performance of his

works.

Anyway, back to pronunciation. I did say that this report was not

about accents, but about inconsistencies in pronunciation that broke

self-imposed rules. We know that the combination "ll" in Argentina is

pronounced "sh". Well, that is their problem, but it is not right to

export it.

There is an Argentine weatherman on CNN's international channel, whose

name is Guillermo. I do not mind that 40 million Argentines call him

"Guishermo", and a few million Uruguayans as well, but I certainly did

mind and told them so, when his Anglo-Saxon colleagues on the network

also started introducing him as "Guishermo", so making hundreds of

millions of non-Spanish speakers round the world who watch CNN, to

think that "ll" was always supposed to be pronounced "sh".

SPAIN'S BIASED COMMITMENT TO EXPANDING ITS CULTURAL INFLUENCE

 

For many years, Spain has been extending the presence and range of

activities of its official cultural institute, the Instituto

Cervantes, which will be jointly organising the Valparaiso congress

with the RAE. Though it was not called that at the time, I myself

started learning Spanish at its London branch in 1971.

There is currently no on-site Spanish diplomatic or cultural presence

in the Caucasus republics. There was a firm promise to kick off with

Armenia, after all a nation of cultured linguists with a long

tradition. Nevertheless, political pressure from NATO & the EU, in the

wake of the Georgian conflict, led to a switch in priorities and the

announcement that such an embassy would be set up instead in uncouth

Tblisi, Georgia. Today, the British, French, Italian, German and

American embassies in Yerevan all have cultural centres attached to

them, with language classes, libraries and scholarships to travel

abroad. The absence of any Spanish-speaking embassy means that if you

wish to study the language in Armenia, you either have to go to an

expensive private institute, or do it at university level. I modestly

helped earlier this year to set up a small Spanish-language library,

on the premises of an Italian NGO. As for traveling, forget it except

by faking to be a tourist and becoming an illegal immigrant in

Valencia. And to think that our last Armenian king, Leon V, once ruled

over all of Madrid!