Visitors ask...How do you pronounce "Guadalupe?"
Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the Americas and is a powerful intercessor for the Pro-Life cause.
I checked the Merriam-Webster dictionary and found the pronunciation there which is not what one hears in an area with a large population of Hispanics!
I then went to wiki.names and looked up Guadalupe and found this:
Pronunciation: wah-da-loo-pay, gwa-da-loo-pay
A colleague is quite fluent in Spanish and I asked which is more correct? (I use the second pronunciation). She told me that there are diverse dialects and that either could be used but the latter is probably more representative. In any case, she said the "G" is soft and not hard and guttural. Therefore, a native Spanish speaker could easily be understood to be using version #1.
I checked the Merriam-Webster dictionary and found the pronunciation there which is not what one hears in an area with a large population of Hispanics!
I then went to wiki.names and looked up Guadalupe and found this:
Pronunciation: wah-da-loo-pay, gwa-da-loo-pay
A colleague is quite fluent in Spanish and I asked which is more correct? (I use the second pronunciation). She told me that there are diverse dialects and that either could be used but the latter is probably more representative. In any case, she said the "G" is soft and not hard and guttural. Therefore, a native Spanish speaker could easily be understood to be using version #1.
I always assumed that the "Spanish" pronunciation was a bit like "ch-wa-da-loo-pe" with the "ch" being a bit like the ch in loch (scottish) or the J in Juan...
ReplyDeleteOf course, it was actually a mistaken pronunciation of the Aztec word which I'm not even going to attempt to spell at this time of night.
I'll just direct you to this post I wrote a while back...
http://mulier-fortis.blogspot.com/2007/02/our-lady-of-guadalupe.html
Thanks for the kind comment! I will have to ask more of those in this area for the "colloquial" pronunciation and see how it matches up.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks for this link: Our Lady of Guadalupe on Mulier Fortis! I will have to visit post haste!
D.v.