Where did that street in beverly hills get its name? Is it just a snobby way of pronouncing rodeo?
If you’re in Beverly Hills and someone hears you say Ro-dee-o Drive, you lose any and all credibility. Regardless of how it might be correctly pronounced, the locals insist on Ro-day-o. That’s it for how to say it, I don’t know anything about the etymology of it though.
I recently saw a film on television about the Calgary Stampede, one of the worlds largest rodeos. The film was made in the 1960s The narrator and all of the cowboys used the ro-day-o pronunciation. Is ro-dee-o a new thing, perhaps a yankee pronuciation that took over?
“ro-day-oh” is basically the Spanish pronunciation of this word, which is a Spanish word.
Us Yankees tend to use the Yankeefied “ro-dee-oh” pronunciation. Interestingly enough, there is a Rodeo St in South Central LA which is pronounced the Yankee way. I made the mistake once and was heartily laughed at.
As greyseal said, “ro-day-oh” is basically the Spanish pronunciation of this word"
Rodeo is the Spanish word for roundup. There is a California town close to San Francisco, Rodeo, pronounced ‘ro-day-oh,’ and I assume that the Southern California pronunciation is the same. Here in California, I have heard only that pronunciation.
Wait a minute! After my post I realized that there are definitely two pronunciations here. At the California State Fair (in Sacramento) the contests are pronounced ‘ro-de-ohs.’ It seems that we adjust to common usage and intuitively know what form to use.
There are many inconsistencies: the town of Vallejo is pronounced ‘val-ay-oh.’ The Spanish ‘j’ is pronounced correctly as ‘h’, but the double-l, if correctly pronounced should have a ‘yay’ sound. Correctly pronounced in Spanish it would be ‘vay-ay-ho.’
The port of San Pedro is locally pronounced ‘San Pee-dro,’ where anyone would assume it would be 'San Pay-dro."
The town ‘Los Gatos’ should be pronouced exactly as it sounds. Local pronounciation is "Las Gaddis,’ and you’re definitely known as a newbie if you use what is the ‘correct’ pronunciation.
Just as in Pierre, South Dakota, and New Madrid, Missouri, local pronunciations rule (Pierre = Pier; New Madrid = New Mad-rid).
Just as a matter of interest, it’s pronounced ro-day-oh in Australasia and IIRC also in the UK.
You don’t say!
Is it also spelled just how it looks? 
Not quite. The letter ‘v’ in Spanish is pronounced like ‘b’. The double-l is pronounced similar to ‘y’ in English. The pronunciation of Vallejo in Spanish is closer to bah-YAY-ho.
[QUOTE’
The town ‘Los Gatos’ should be pronouced exactly as it sounds. Local pronounciation is "Las Gaddis,’ and you’re definitely known as a newbie if you use what is the ‘correct’ pronunciation.[/QUOTE]
I think you mean “pronounced exactly as it’s spelled.” The Spanish pronunciation of Los Gatos is close to Lohs GAH-tohs.
Your explaination of the v sounding like b is true, in Spain, castillian Spain to be precise. Castillians also pronounce some c’s like th’s, so it would be Bar-they-lo-na instead of bar-say-lo-na. Your example seems more spanish, and less mexican to me, and Mexico is most assuredly more involved here than Spain is. Dialects differ all around, but I heard very, very little Castillian in California when I lived there.
‘V’ is pronounced like ‘b’ in Mexican Spanish, and in all dialects of Spanish that I know about.
I used to work a phone desk in California, and a Latino caller was giving me his name. I asked if it started with B or V, and he replied, “B, as in Bictor”. 
Yes, it’s “Roe-day-oh” Drive, but I always call any other kind of rodeo “Roe-dee-oh.” Go figure. Except for the musical piece by Copland, which is also pronounced “Roe-day-oh.”
Years ago a friend asked me to show around a lady that had come in from out of town. (I forget where—but far, far away from California.) I met her down in Hollywood and we drove in her car. I was telling her where to turn and I said something about “La Brea” (as in the La Brea Tar Pits) which, since I was a local, pronounced as “La Bray-ah.” The lady kept on calling it “La Bray” and refused to say it any other way. It was almost like she was offended that I pronounced it the way I did.
And then there’s Camarillo, a town north of Los Angeles (famous for its mental institution), which is pronounced by locals as “Kam-a-ree-oh” but by outsiders as “Kam-a-rill-oh.” I once listened to a Sue Grafton book on tape (which was set in California) where the narrator pronounced it “Kam-a-rill-oh.” That lost all credibility for me.
Um, no. This is one of my pet peeves around here. You two, obviously know little or no Spanish. That pronunciation is English and strictly English. Please don’t assume the written vowels have the same phonetic value in any other language. I don’t know how many times I am going to have to repeat this.
The vowels in Spanish, as in most languages that used the Roman alphabet, English being the exception, have short, brief, sounds and not the English long ones:
a = ah as in father (think of “la” in Spanish)
e = eh (think of “te” in Spanish)
i = ee as in geek (think of “ti” in Spanish)
o = short o as in pot
u = ooh (think of “tu” in Spanish)
Anyone who says rodeo is pronounced ro-day-o in Spanish does not know the most basic thing about Spanish pronunciation.
True, but unless everyone learns the IPA alphabet people will approximate pronunciation with sounds close enough in their native language. You’re of course not wrong about pronouncing it correctly.
The other thing, V and b only sound like B at the beginnings of words. Between vowels, whether within a word or in sentences where a word with an initial b or v follows a word ending in a vowel, that b or v sounds more like a cross between b and v.
Intervocalic (between vowels) D is pronounced like the “th” in “they”. However in Philippines Spanish the above two go out the window and intervocalic b and v are pronounced as b, and intervocalic d is pronounced as a clear, sharp d.
Oh and let’s not forget that e has two values, e as in spanish, and the e in words like the American English pronunciation of “yet” (usually before consonants, although not like a full on English pronunciation) and yes that is true as i’ve heard it myself, and i do know the difference between the two.
Another town that has a deceptively pronounced name:
San Rafael in the bay area, which should be pronounced as with 4 syllables (in Spanish) but is said like “san ruh-fell”
worst mispronunciation of local town names:
My mother’s family when they visited from Kansas said San Jose as “San Josie” and Salinas as “Suh-lye-nuhss”
True, dat. I worked with a woman of Mexican ancestry who lives in San Pedro. She would become quite offended if people peonounced the name of her town “San Pay-dro”.
yosemitebabe: I’ve never heard anyone pronounce La Brea as “La Bray”. I’ve never heard Camarillo pronounced “Cam-a-rill-o”.
Jeff Lichtman: So, do you live in “El THerrito”? (Just pulling your chain. )
(Mis)-pronunciation goes both ways, of course. I worked with a Texican who kept correcting me when I said “salmon” (“sammun”). He would say, “You mean sal-mone?”, even after I showed him the entry in the dictionary that showed the pronunciation I was using.
The same guy used to ride his bicycle to work. Since he’s obviously Hispanic, a Spanish-speaking man in a car stopped to ask him directions to “Stahtah Coyayhay”. It took my co-worker a minute or two to realize the guy was looking for State College Blvd.
I am not asking anyone to learn anything if they don’t want to. All I ask is that they stop spreading misinformation. Ro-day-o is most definitely not the Spanish pronunciation. It is the American pronunciation. If you do not know the Spanish correct pronunciation maybe you should not be posting incorrect answers. That’s all I’m saying.
There was another thread not too long ago where we discussed the same thing. Maybe someone can find it. I forget what the specific word was in that instance.
Reminds me of a story I heard about an American who had been to Mexico and his opinion was that “Mexicans are idiots who do not understand their own language even when it is shouted at them”.
And what i said was since most people don’t know how to properly write IPA here they’re going to approximate according to sounds of their own language how it sounds to them.
Well, certainly no locals or natives would.
The “La Bray” lady was a tourist from the Midwest or East Coast somewhere and was a piece of work anyway. (She was obsessed with Harrison Ford and was convinced that I could help her find his house.)
The person who pronounced it “Cama-rill-oh” on the book-on-tape was obviously not from the Southern California area either. Kind of spoiled the atmosphere of the story (well, a little). I can’t say that I hear a lot of people call it “Cama-rill-o” but then I’m usually not around a lot of non-locals who happen to talk about Camarillo so it isn’t like it sticks out in my mind.
Anyway, you’d be surprised how people will pronounce things. One that is hard to get right (I can sympathize) is La Cañada. (It’s a suburb near Glendale, California.) If you neglect to do the ñ thing, (and sometimes, even if you do) people are just going to say La Canada. But of course, it’s pronounced “La Can-YA-da.”
I had an employer assume I was from Canada because they saw that I was previously employed in La Cañada. (I’m pretty sure I wrote the ñ in there too.)
And don’t get me started on Tujunga. A non-California friend of mine pronounced it “Tuh-jung-a” but of course it’s “Tuh-HUNG-ah.”
Imagine how people would pronounce “Port Hueneme”! (ISTR hearing people “hyoo-neem” at some point.)
Re: La Cañada. I can never hear it without subconsciously adding “/Flintridge” to it, because the weather and traffic reports were always “La Cañada/Flintridge” on the radio.
There was an English actor on KCET a long time ago, who appeared during a fund drive. He said “Sepple-veeda” (Sepulveda) and “Pass-adden-ah” (Pasadena).