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Have you noticed how actors in movies in the 30's and 40's said "Los Anga-leez"? They would take the arrow-plane to Los Anga-leez. I think Art Linkletter was the last person I heard say LA that way. And now, it is entering its third form in a century, as increasingly bilingual news reporters are starting to say "loce ON-hay-lace"
Many Brits still say "los-anja-leez." But Los Angeles will never become "loce ON-hay-lace" among American English speakers, no worries there.
Actually, the local pronunciations of Spanish place-names in California can be an odd mix of English "spelling pronunciations" (what a monolingual English-speaker might assume by looking at them) and the original Spanish pronunciations.
We can usually tell tourists and transplants because they err one way or the other, either too English or too Spanish. For example, there's a Canadian broadcaster on our local news who says San Clemente as "San Cle-men-tay." It's actually "San cle-Menty."
La Jolla is "La Hoy-uh," which is not by any means an English treatment of that word, but it's not quite Spanish, either.
Sounds Spanish to me; 'J' pronounced like a 'H', double 'L' pronounced like a 'Y'.
How would you pronounce it?
You want to get technical? The Spanish letter J is more guttural than English H (in IPA, it's represented by the letter X).
Double L is sometimes pronounced like Y, sometimes more like English J or ZH, and the Spanish vowels are pure /a/ and /o/. "Ho-ya," not "hoy-uh." "Hoy-uh" is just an anglicized approximation. The point I am making is that if an English-speaking person made a point of saying La Jolla the Spanish way, /la'xoja/, instead of the usual English pronunciation /lə'hɔɪə/, it would sound as strange and pretentious as "loce ON-hay-lace" for Los Angeles.
You want to get technical? The Spanish letter J is more guttural than English H (in IPA, it's represented by the letter X).
Double L is sometimes pronounced like Y, sometimes more like English J or ZH, and the Spanish vowels are pure /a/ and /o/. "Ho-ya," not "hoy-uh." "Hoy-uh" is just an anglicized approximation. The point I am making is that if an English-speaking person made a point of saying La Jolla the Spanish way, /la'xoja/, instead of the usual English pronunciation /lə'hɔɪə/, it would sound as strange and pretentious as "loce ON-hay-lace" for Los Angeles.
The Spanish "j" or "x" is a lot like the Scottish "loch". Or the Hebrew pronunciation of Chanukah.
Chaumont(sha-mo), Olean(o-lee-an), Watervliet(water-vleet) and Schuyler(sky-ler) in NY. Tchula(chew-la) MS; Ypsilanti(ip-sil-an-ti), Dowagiac(de-was-gee-ac) and Okemos(oh-ki-mus) in MI and Martinez(mar-tin-ez) GA come to mind.
You want to get technical? The Spanish letter J is more guttural than English H (in IPA, it's represented by the letter X).
Double L is sometimes pronounced like Y, sometimes more like English J or ZH, and the Spanish vowels are pure /a/ and /o/. "Ho-ya," not "hoy-uh." "Hoy-uh" is just an anglicized approximation. The point I am making is that if an English-speaking person made a point of saying La Jolla the Spanish way, /la'xoja/, instead of the usual English pronunciation /lə'hɔɪə/, it would sound as strange and pretentious as "loce ON-hay-lace" for Los Angeles.
Actually, no, I didn't want to get technical, especially if it means I have to pronounce La Jolla like I'm getting ready to hock a loogie.
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