How do you pronounce ‘paprika’: pap-REEK-a, PAP-rick-a, or something else, and where are you from?
I grew up pronouncing it PAP-rick-a, because that’s how my parents pronounce it, but found that people look at me oddly for it. I assumed that my family had some weird, incorrect pronunciation, but couldn’t quite eradicate it. Then, today, I saw this video, in which Mark Bittman pronounces it like I do (the first time is at 1:42, although later, the anchorwoman, who is pronouncing it pap-REEK-a, kind of ‘corrects’ herself and changes to his pronunciation). My father’s accent is not dissimilar to Bittman’s, although it’s not as heavy, so is it possible that it’s a regionalism? I grew up in New Jersey, although many people from the New York region still find my pronunciation odd.
I waver between the two. I grew up saying “puh-PREE-ka” for two reasons: One, my parents are both Polish and growing up, they pronounced it with the stress on the second syllable because stresses almost always land on the penultimate syllable in Polish. Of course, this would lead me to stressing a lot of other words incorrectly, like “oregano” (though the Brits do say ore-eh-GAH-no.) Two, it’s the usual pronunciation I hear around these parts.
Now, occasionally I will lapse into stressing the first syllable, because I had lived in Hungary for a number of years and, paprika being such a ubiquitous spice there, I found myself using the word a lot, and pronouncing it the Hungarian way, with the accent on the first syllable (Hungarian always stresses the first syllable.)