Could someone give me a clue how to pronounce these two last names: “Roque” and “Aguirre”? When I try to do it, my brain tries to treat them as French words and pronounce them that way, but French pronounciation apparently isn’t the way to go here.
For the record, these are students in my classes. I tell my students to feel free to correct me if I get their names wrong, but sometimes the students are either too intimidated to tell me the correct pronounciation or just can’t be bothered, and that’s the case with these two students. The students both appear to be Hispanic, so I’m guessing that Spanish pronounciation is the way to go (or possibly Portuguese?) but that’s just a guess. Even if that’s right, I don’t speak a word of Spanish, so I’m at a loss.
Several years ago, the Dallas Mavericks had a player who I kept hearing talked about - Mark Agwire, or Aguire, or something. But I went to a few games and noticed a player who was pretty good named Mark Aguirre, which I pronounce a-geer-eh (since I’m from West Texas and Spanish surnames are extremely common). It took me a while to realize that this was the same player I had heard called Agwire. I heard later that his name was supposed to be pronounced a-geer-eh, but sportscasters never said that, so he just gave up and went by a-gwire.
I know, but it gets the gist across. “eh” is open to misinterpretation, as it could mean “e” as in “bet” or “eh” as in “Eh?” (which to my ear is pronounced identically to “ay”). The Spanish isn’t really like either of these.