Pronunciation question -- quixotic

[Desdichado]

Generally, the English pronunciation is just the Spanish one with the Spanish 'x' sound (which sounds like the 'ch' in the German 'ach' or the Spanish 'j' ie. a voiceless velar fricative) replaced with an English 'h' sound. So, basically 'kee - hot - tick.'

Uh... no, it's not. That was my whole point; it would make more sense if it were, especially since generally the pronunciation of Quixote is more or less equivalent to the Spanish pronunciation.

But in the case of quixotic, it's not.

 

[Desdichado]

It's partly because it's a Latinized derivative. It's traditional to reduce the root to an Anglo-Latin pronunciation when you derive a Latinized adjective form, though the pattern is somewhat inconsistent. Another big factor is that it was coined in an era when Spanish pronunciation was not widely known in England, which you also hear in the title of Byron's "Don Juan" ("dahn jew-un").
"Kwiksotik" is what I've always heard, anyway.

(E.g. "Noachian", "Jurassic", "Confucian", "Caesarian")

I don't think your examples prove what I think you're trying to say they prove. After all, there is no english noun form on which Jurassic or Noachian is built (at least that I know of), and words like Confucius and Caesar are also pronounced "incorrectly" in English, so that the adjective form is at least consistent with the noun form. In the case of quixotic, that's not true; the noun form is pronounced (more or less) correct while the adjective form suddenly acquires completely different rules of pronunciation.

 

[fusangite]

Uh... no, it's not. That was my whole point; it would make more sense if it were, especially since generally the pronunciation of Quixote is more or less equivalent to the Spanish pronunciation.

But in the case of quixotic, it's not.

It seems to me that how people actually say the word is relevant here. Generally, the word is pronounced as it should be; regardless of what the authorities say, my overwhelming personal experience is that whenever people use they word, pronounce a Spanish 'x' and not an English 'x.'

 

[Desdichado]

My overwhelming personal experience is that nobody says the word aloud.

And few people use it at all.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It seems to me that how people actually say the word is relevant here.

And that's how we get vowel shift and dipthongs.

How people say the word is relevant, yes.

But how they say it does not always make it correct. And sometimes you want to stem the tide of incorrect pronunciation, no matter how quixotic it seems.

(I maintain, of course, that the correct pronunciation of quixotic is the non-Spanish version, as it's an English word.)

 

[tarchon]

I don't think your examples prove what I think you're trying to say they prove. After all, there is no english noun form on which Jurassic or Noachian is built (at least that I know of), and words like Confucius and Caesar are also pronounced "incorrectly" in English, so that the adjective form is at least consistent with the noun form. In the case of quixotic, that's not true; the noun form is pronounced (more or less) correct while the adjective form suddenly acquires completely different rules of pronunciation.

"Jurassic" is from the Jura (zhüra) mountains. Confucian/Confucius are from (in Mandarin) Kong-Fu Zi. Noachian is from Noah. The idea is that in the derivation you're forming an intermediate Latin root (which may (still) exist as in the case of Confucius or may not as in the case of Don Quixote). As I said, it's somewhat irregular, but the principle is well established. Sassanian, Mencius, Hurrian, Mayan, Celtic, Germanic, Mosaic, Einsteinian, Croatian, etc.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

my overwhelming personal experience is that whenever people use they word, pronounce a Spanish 'x' and not an English 'x.'

I wonder, without any peevishness at all, if the subset of people who use a word like quixotic in spoken speech might also include a lot of people who think they know how it should be pronounced, when, in fact, they don't.

"Too smart for their own good," kinds of folks.

 

[Lhorgrim]

I'm far from a linguist, but it seems odd to me to pronounce quixotic so differentlt from Quixote. Of course I defer to those who understand these sorts of pronunciation issues far better than myself.

I do have a serious question. How would a spanish speaker decribe someone as being "like Quixote"?
Is there a single word in spanish that covers this thought, or would it be expressed in a phrase?

 

[tarchon]

It seems to me that how people actually say the word is relevant here. Generally, the word is pronounced as it should be; regardless of what the authorities say, my overwhelming personal experience is that whenever people use they word, pronounce a Spanish 'x' and not an English 'x.'

I've probably heard it hundreds of times - from time to time people do attempt to say it like you do, but it's definitely perceived as substandard (like saying "nukuler" for nuclear). The problem with trying to enforce foreign phonology on derived English words is firstly that you say it wrong anyway. "kee ho tay" is not how the word is pronounced in Spanish. It's a closer approximation, but it's still wrong. Secondly, "quixotic" is not a Spanish word. There is no way to pronounce it in Spanish, at all. If you use the method in which every derived word is a weird chimaera of English and some other language, it leads to a vast array of idiosyncratic mangled pronunciations as various speakers pronounce it according to however much of the original language they happen to know. Long, long ago it was consequently concluded that the easiest way to handle it was to just totally Anglicize derived words with standard pronunciations.

 

[fusangite]

I've probably heard it hundreds of times - from time to time people do attempt to say it like you do, but it's definitely perceived as substandard (like saying "nukuler" for nuclear). The problem with trying to enforce foreign phonology on derived English words is firstly that you say it wrong anyway. "kee ho tay" is not how the word is pronounced in Spanish. It's a closer approximation, but it's still wrong. Secondly, "quixotic" is not a Spanish word. There is no way to pronounce it in Spanish, at all. If you use the method in which every derived word is a weird chimaera of English and some other language, it leads to a vast array of idiosyncratic mangled pronunciations as various speakers pronounce it according to however much of the original language they happen to know. Long, long ago it was consequently concluded that the easiest way to handle it was to just totally Anglicize derived words with standard pronunciations.

I agree with much of what you say. But we have to adapt to unpleasant and irrational linguistic shifts all the time. We all have to start saying "it's all good" or using "societal" in place of "social" or whatever at some point, however stupid and ugly it is.

I wonder, without any peevishness at all, if the subset of people who use a word like quixotic in spoken speech might also include a lot of people who think they know how it should be pronounced, when, in fact, they don't.

There is no "should be pronounced" beyond how words actually are pronounced. I agree that it sucks but it's true.