Pushing this post away from pissing contests… please?
That’s true, I didn’t catch that because I didn’t really feel up to wading through all of the autofellating that was going on back there. Excuse me. My point still holds true. You want us all to see how special you are because of your language abilities at someone else’s expense. Lets start at the beginning, no?
A little early to be so uncivil, or am I wrong? You know they may not be experts at Spanish, but your assumption is quite insulting.
Nice use of condescending tone, but it certainly gets worse for you, my friend. :rolleyes:
Thanks but I don’t really care as I am not operating from the standpoint of language mastery as some sort of amazing feat.
When I used Mexican in that sentence, I meant it as the likely origin of rodeo for Los Angeles, and not to specify a significant difference. The fact that it is of Mexican origin means nothing to me, other than the fact that they speak Spanish. I’ll restate it, using Spanish for all terms. But the problem is when I say Spanish origin, it makes it sound like its from Spain, when its really from Spaniards in mexico. And mexicans don’t speak mexican they speak Spanish. But the point I was making is that the OP wanted to know where the pronunciation came from, and its obvious that its from a spanish origin. You can always argue that its nothing like a true spanish accent, but its the more spanish of the two known options to the Native American English speaker. Taking your average American with no knowledge of Spanish they best they can do is say the approximate vowels and consonants. RoDAYoh is closer to the spanish word than roDEEoh. Thats what was going on in this quote
to which you drew the first blood responding:
As if it weren’t relatively closer? WTF is going on here? They threw that qualifier “basically” in there for a reason. Do you get so offended when someone says that a spanish word in english is basically the same pronunciation? When someone says Mercedes or Porche in english it isn’t the German way, but its basically the same. I KNOW the difference but its easy enough to tell that its comes from SPANISH. How picky can you get to pretend as if there is NO similarity? Who was making the claim that they sound exactly the same? Nobody.
Why only two? Because the OP called into question the pronunciation of an English word. Rodeo Dr. is an anglicized word, just like estimation and any word we got from French. Its a lot newer, but not Spanish anymore. The whole point is why there are two different pronunciations of a word in English. People tried to make the point that its similar or basically the same in Spanish. RoDAYoh is relatively more Spanish than roDEEoh. It makes sense that in LA, which has a huge and continual Spanish influence there would be a tendency to keep more hispanicized forms.
And yes, its still the same. I made the false assumption that you were a native English speaker who had a good command of Spanish. It doesn’t matter. The fact is that billingual people tend to think they are really special when they aren’t. I know it may seem like that in America, but if you go to other places in the world, it is more common.
I don’t see how you contradicted me considering how I hadn’t posted in this thread before. Its “showing off” because you are making an ass of yourself berating everyone else’s Spanish. Sure they might not be as good as a native speaker but they tried. They made their best guesses, but there was no need to dismiss someone else’s point in such a harsh manner.
I actually agree with everything you say about Spanish, so I am not really thinking that you were contradicting me. I just saw this thread that somebody had an honest question and then he got a few answers, they were mostly correct. Then you came in to state that the spanish pronunciation and the english ones aren’t the same. That’s fine, but the insulting tone isn’t necessary.
I don’t really know how I could have made an error considering that I had no prior posts.
Look, you are the one who made this a personal pissing contest. I have been centering my points on the issues being discussed. If you are going to attack me personally the least you can do is get your facts straight.
First you are saying the dialects are different, now you are saying they are not. You keep going around all these things and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
My only point is that average Americans with no knowledge of Spanish should not be answering questions about Spanish pronunciation. That is my point. That’s all. No offense meant to anyone or anybody, living or dead.
Look, I don’t care any more. I have more interesting threads going on. If you or anyone wishes to discuss any of the points I made I will be happy to answer but I have no interest in discussing who is better looking or more intelligent. The Forum for that is not this one. I am here to discuss factual answers to questions. I think my contribution has been made. I apologize if I offended anyone in the way I said things.
Well, this rodeo, however you want to pronounce it, has certainly turned into an old-fashioned goat rope, for which there is only ONE pronunciation.
I agree with Sailor on the -eh vs -ay pronounciation.
I cringe every time I see a translation as -ay. When I see -ay, in my mind, it come out sounding like a big ol’ Texan accent. Eeeww wee pardner, it’s Ro-DAY-o time! 
The -ay vs -eh is usually a huge tip off that someone is not a native speaker. That said, if someone said Ro-DAY-o, I would most certainly understand them. If a Mexican came up to you and said eh-Steve instead of Steve you would understand them too, but you’d know they weren’t native speakers.
All that aside, the one pronounciation that always trips me up is in Austin: Guadalupe Street. It should be Wah-dah-loo-peh but it’s pronounced Goo’wah-da-loop. I use both pronounciations: the former when speaking Spanish and the later when speaking English.
When foreign words–including names–appear in Jeopardy! answers, I note Trebek’s pronunciation and always follow it with what I believe to be the correct or nearly correct pronunciation. I pronounce “Beta”, the Greek letter, “Veeta,” though at home I am criticized for doing so. I never hear anyone pronounce “San Jose” as if the “J” had the English sound and the word rhymed with “dose.” The English pronunciation of foreign names seems to be a sloppy jumble of English and (distorted) foreign sounds. In Indiana, the name of the city “Terre Haute” is always pronounced “Terra Hoate,” although the French pronunciation is (approximately) “Terr Ohte.”
The American League batting star Napoleon Lajoie always pronounced his last name “LAJ-uh-way.”
Not that it’s a word that I get to use with any frequency but to me the pronounciation RO-dee-oh seems more natural in English. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Midnight Cowboy a few times.
No, it’s not to be snooty. They just pronounce it a little closer to the Spanish pronunciation.
BTW, I recall hearing Jack Webb pronounce “rodeo” as “ro-DAY-oh” in the “Dragnet” series, when he was talking about the cowboy event, not the drive. But, he was a local boy.
Welcome to Rodeo, California
**Quote: **
For thousands of years, Rodeo was home to the Ohlone Indians. The arrival of Spanish explorers and the resulting land grants during the 1800’s transformed the area from a quiet Indian enclave to a bustling center of ranching, meat packing, lumber yards and shipping.
Rodeo was founded in 1890 when the Union Stock Yard Company was formed for the purpose of canning and packing meat. Rodeo (pronounced Ro-DAY-o) gets its name from the cattle, sheep and hog round-ups (also known as rodeos) which took place at the Union Stock Yards.
sailor, you are of course right about the difference between Spanish “e” and English “ay”, and I’m not altogether sure why people are getting so hot under the collar at you for pointing out the difference. But I must take issue with your assertion quoted above - the vowel in “day” is a diphthong or glide /ei/ as opposed to a pure vowel but I don’t believe any phonetician would say it has two syllables or transliterate it as you did (with a hyphen). It’s a single phoneme in English. To say there are two syllables in “day” (or “light”, or “boy”…) is to apply a Spanish rule to English.
I agree. I was simplifying. I was just trying to point out the difference by exagerating it. In fact, I believe the couple “ei” is considered a diphtong in Spanish as well.
THANK YOU You pretty much answered my OP.
Yup. He was born in Santa Monica.
I thought the debate here was about the pronunciation of the ‘o’ in rodeo, not the ‘e’. I stand corrected.
Sailor, you are a cunning linguist and a master debater.
Minor nitpick: You’re right about the sounds; however, other languages using the Roman alphabet do indeed have long vowels, vowel length being simply that–the duration of pronunciation. A long vowel is held in the mouth longer than a short vowel.
English actually has proper long vowels too. Generally, a vowel will be long if it comes before voiced stop, fricative, or nasal, or if it is the final sound in the word. Think of how you pronounce the word *bid vs bit. The vowel in both is qualitatively the same, but held longer in bid. Similarly with bead and beat.
What elementary school teachers of reading and spelling call ‘long’ vowels are never called that by linguists; they’re actually diphthongs, and their true length generally follows the phonetic rule above. Think of make and made. Again, the sound will be more protracted when it precedes the voiced consonant.
Going back to sailor’s first post…
There is a lot of attitude in that post and I think it’s totally unjustified. If a native English speaker is asked to repeat the word “rodeo” as pronounced by a native Spanish speaker, it’s going to come out sounding like “ro-day-o.” The o’s are also going to sound longer, almost with a u at the end, and the r is not going to be rolled. Greyseal and skaycat’s statements, with the qualifier of “basically,” are correct. Of course, few native English speaker can pronounce Spanish words exactly as a native Spanish speaker would.