Pronounciation of "jalapeno"

[pulykamell]

@Rigamarole

You’ve got it backwards… in Spanish it is an “ay” sound (as in “bay” or “day” which is how the letter “e” is always pronounced in Spanish). You’re looking at the English pronunciation, which is different.

No, I don’t. Read Nava’s post. Read the IPA pronunciation of the Spanish pronunciation of jalapeno. American English speakers tend to pronounce the Spanish “e” as a diphthong. It is not a diphthong in Spanish. However, it’s not exactly the same as a short “eh” in English, either. If you know French, it’s the same vowel as the “é” in “clé.” Thinking about it some more, I suppose some will hear “AY” as a closer approximation. I hear “EH” is a closer approximation, and I’ve been corrected by Spanish speakers before on this, for example, not to pronounce “José” as “ho-ZAY,” but as “ho-SEH.” If you cut the American pronunciation of “AY” in half (that is, remove the second vowel in the diphthong), you’ve pretty much got the Spanish sound for “e.”

[pulykamell]

Not that I like about.com as a source, but read the explanation here.

Sometimes, the e is similar to the vowel sound in English words such as “say” - but shorter. Some explanation is in order here. If you listen carefully, you may notice that for many English speakers the vowel sound in “say” is made up of two sounds - there’s an “eh” sound that glides into an “ee” sound, so the word is pronounced something like “seh-ee.” When pronouncing the Spanish e, only the “eh” sound is used - there’s no glide into an “ee” sound. (In fact, if you pronounce the glide, it becomes the Spanish diphthong ei rather than e. As one native speaker using the nickname Didi explained recently in our forum: “As a native I’d say that the most accurate pronunciation for that e sound is like that in ‘bet’ or ‘met.’ The sound of ‘ace’ has an extra vowel sound that makes it unsuitable.”

[guizot]

@pulykamell

…It is not a diphthong in Spanish. However, it’s not exactly the same as a short “eh” in English, either. If you know French, it’s the same vowel as the “é” in “clé.” …

Also, as I mentioned above, amongst Spanish speakers themselves the /e/ varies in openness, so it can range as allophones from something between [Ɛ] and [ei], depending on phonology (and regionalism, it seems to me).