Why is the well-known Beverly Hills shopping district street pronounced Ro-DAY-o Drive and not RO-dee-o Drive? Why is the cow ropin’ competition pronounced RO-dee-o and not ro-DAY-o?
Totally non-scientific guess…
ro-DAY-o is the correct Spanish pronunciation (fact). RO-dee-o is the Southwest Anglo/Texan/cowboy mispronunciation (that’s the guess). As the sporting event takes its roots from Mexico by way of the cowboy culture, it’s RO-dee-o. As Beverly Hills would rather not be associated with something so declasse, it’s ro-DAY-o.
it is more or les up to you how you say it howeer
when you go to watch cowboys sit on there beast or what ever they do
do you say im at the ro-DAY-o
or do you say im at the ro-dee-o
what im getting at is i think its ro-dee-o
but it’s your choice
In a strange linguistic phenomenon in Southern California, Spanish sounding names are considered more classy than English pronunciations.
Hence ro-DAY-oh Drive.
Also most new housing developments are full of Spanish names “Paseo del _____”
“Vista del _____”
“Via ________”
However if a native speaker of Spanish moved into one of these neighborhoods, the residents would be quite perturbed.
Not necessarily. I have a co-worker who lives in San Pedro, which is pronounced San PEE-dro by people who live there. (Yes, my co-worker is of Mexican descent.)
I was at least able to find it when someone told me to go there. Unlike when I spent several hours trying to find La Hoya. Finally found it when I stopped on the corner of La Jolla and asked directions.
But San Pedro is a very old part of Southern California. Nor is it considered to be as prestigious as Beverly Hills.
But the residents of San Pedro do prefer the long “e” pronunciation I agree. But the street names in San Pedro don’t follow the “Via ----” pattern like newer developments like Calabasas or Valencia follow.
The whole practice of pronouncing Spanish place names in Southern California is very politically charged now. The City of Los Angeles decided to redo some signs and add the ~ where needed. Beverly Hills had always done this.
Also some news anchors make it a point to pronounce every Spanish word as if it were … well … Spanish and some people find this offensive.
I’ve never quite figured it out in all the years I’ve lived here.
Santa Fe, NM has its own share of weird Spanish/English hybridology. The town takes great pride in its Spanish heritage but over 100’s of years has developed its own local dialect/pronunciations. Their is a small town nearby called Madrid, for instance, and all the locals pronounce it MAD-rid (short a, short i) not mah-Dreed like the city in Spain.
We have a Rodeo Road, pronounced Ro-dee-oh, because it goes past the rodeo and county fairgrounds. But when the “Rodeo de Santa Fe” is held annually you pronounce the event’s name Ro-day-oh. If you ask a local where Ro-day-oh Road is they would tell you “in Beverly Hills, why?”