I’d use a Mexican accent in a Mexican restaurant. Living in Texas & eating out a lot, only an idiot would not pick up a bit of the language. And I’ve done some formal study as well.
The Spanish accent is not used in Latin America. In “Castilian” Spanish, for example, “s” is a soft “th” (as in “thin”) & “z” is a hard “th” (as in “the”). I ordered churrascos at a nice Latin American (not “Mexican”) restaurant & requested the sherry sauce–that’s “jerez”–inadvertantly giving it the “Spanish” pronunciation. The waiter gave me a glance meaning “give me a break.” To Latin American ears, that accent sounds like the “Oxbridge” accent sounds to Americans. (Actually, we’re all Americans in the Western Hemisphere.)
Use the best pronunciation you can manage–the waitstaff will not be insulted. Ignorance is uncool.
I draw a distinction between an American accent and anglicized pronunciation. There seems to be a split in this thread - some do and some don’t.
To borrow the example provided by Bad News Baboon (Guadalupe):[ul][li]Wa-da-lu-peh - Spanish/Mexican/whatever accent & pronunciation[]Goo-wah-da-loop - anglicized pronunciation (application of English rules to Spanish spelling)[]Gwad-a-loo-pay - Spanish pronunciation, American accent[/ul]When ordering “Guadalupe tacos” (to just make up a convenient example), I do think it would be kind of odd to insert Wa-da-lu-peh in the middle of an English sentence. It seems to me akin to an Englishman eating at a restaurant in London, ordering a “Fort Worth pepper steak” (again, I’m making up a dish) and affecting an American accent when saying “Fort Worth.” Gwad-a-loo-pay, to me, seems more appropriate in that context.[/li]
Ignorance is uncool, but so is pretentiousness. The region in between can be pretty tough to define sometimes.
Okay Guadaloop is where I draw the line. That is ridiculous. Honestly, it reminds me of the time Zap Brannigan from Futurama calls Guacamole… Guacamol.
But anyways, Bridget, I am not going to use a Castilian accent in a Mexican Restaurant. Its just stupid, I’ll either try to make it sound Mexican or American. I am exactly trying to avoid those “give me a break” type looks. Most people find it really easy to sense the pleasure someone gets from speaking another language, and its hard not to show it right when it comes in handy? But then a lot of people will think you are being pretentious. When I say the name of the places where I’ve been in Spain, I don’t use a Spanish accent. Why? I think its inappropriate. I am speaking English, and there are English ways of saying things. I don’t really like to mix languages, you know, and even when I do, I always align it with the accent of the language that I’m speaking. I say Bush with a Spanish accent when speaking Spanish and with an American accent when speaking English. I feel that it suits me the best
I didn’t think about it when I posted, but I wanted to clarify that when I spoke of Spanish Accents, I was referring to the language and not the country. To be more precise, I should have said Mexican accents.
To order Mexican food in a Castillian accent would just be wrong!
Unath enchiladath ethepecialeth (I assume is how it would sound instead of unas enchiladas especiales)
I agree with Brad_d about context.
To me it is all or nothing. If I order in English then I use American accents.
If I order in Spanish, I’ll say the words correctly.
I find that mixing the two often confuses the person taking the order. It seems that whenever I have mixed the two, the waiter will say, “could you please repeat that?”.
It wasn’t the Olive Garden or any other Italian-esque chain.
And ya gotta put an “s” in it.
For me, and my Roman prof, Brus-chetta = broo-sketta
I agree with you that anything pronounced brooshetta oughta be spelled bruscietta.
But I’m a snob in all the wrong ways.
And to clarify, I wasn’t arguing with the waitress so much as just resisting her attempts to “fix” my pronunciation. It’s not like after the first time she said “Brooshetta” I responded with: “It’s pronounced broosketta, you ignoramus.”
I’m no expert, but I did take Italian in college (and paid attention). What I can say is that the standard way of pronouncing bruschetta must be: “broo-ske-tta”. the ‘h’ in front of the ‘sc’ keeps it from being pronounced like “sh” in English. Having said that, there is of course a fair amount of regional variation. Sicilian dialect is quite different. I don’t know what those differences are, but they might include pronouncing the “-sche-” of standard Italian as “sheh”.
[goes off to look up stuff on the Sicilian dialect]
OK, I’ve looked up the Sicilian dilaect online and I have found that bruschetta should be pronounced like the standard Italian, probably. This is based on the descriptions here: http://home.att.net/~ilsiciliano/images/course_of_sicilian_language.htm. Of course, this partticular description of Sicilian doesn’t describe all the variations found on the island, so maybe you could hear “brooshetta” on Sicily.
As to the OP, I think it is fine ot do it either way. It really depends on the conventions of where you are ordering. If it feels too odd to try to pronounce the words right, just use an American accent. But I think one ought to try if one can.
That’s my worst habit – I tend to mix the two up half the time and end up with some hodgepodge. I’ll realize I’m pronouncing something in Spanish and then worry that I’m being pretentious (even with my thick accent and random tendency to forget words – did I mention my lack of fluency too?), so I’ll switch back to Americanizing things.
FWIW, in this article, the author makes it a point to emphasize the pronunciation of broo-SKET-uh in the restaurant La Bruschetta, and interviews the Sicilian owners of the restaurant in the article. I would have to assume that the Sicilian owners also used that pronunciation.
FWIW, I’ve never heard anything but the hard “k” pronunciation as being correct, but there may be regional variations I don’t know about.
