I thought this one was interesting primarily because you get to hear an actual Spanish person say the name "Don Quixote" which sounds NOTHING like we Americans have been saying it since time immemorial.
How did we get it so wrong?
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Kay-Ho-Tay
I'm sick, so I can't really do anything besides lie around and complain. So I'm watching videos that ballet companies post on YouTube. Why not, am I right?
I thought this one was interesting primarily because you get to hear an actual Spanish person say the name "Don Quixote" which sounds NOTHING like we Americans have been saying it since time immemorial.
How did we get it so wrong?
I thought this one was interesting primarily because you get to hear an actual Spanish person say the name "Don Quixote" which sounds NOTHING like we Americans have been saying it since time immemorial.
How did we get it so wrong?
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I was surprised by this dancer's pronunciation of "Quixote" too, so I did a bit of digging around. This seems to be a regional thing.
ReplyDeleteThe modern Spanish pronunciation is the one Americans use, while the dancer in the video is using the old Castilian pronunciation. Some regions of Spain still retain the Castilian flavor; for example, my high school Spanish teacher spoke Castilian natively, so when I pronounce the letter "C" in Spanish it comes out "thay" rather than "say".
Here's a link to Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote#Spelling_and_pronunciation
Interesting! Thanks for the info. I was one of those silly high school students that took French, because they had Big Plans rather than Spanish, which would actually have been useful living in California...
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