Patio : The world from South Texas

[A. Vine]

Rudolph C Troike wrote:
>
>         Very informally, I would guess that in most of the area from San
> Antonio southward in Texas, _patio_ is pronounced only with /a/. I grew up
> with that as the only pronunciation, and was quite startled when I went to
> California in 1954 and discovered that this newly-popular aspect of
> American architecture was pronounced with /ae/. My intuitive reaction was
> and is that the pronunciation with /ae/ sounds offensive, like so many
> other distortions of Spanish borrowings prevalent in California (as
> /piydrow/ for _Pedro_ in _San Pedro_). Developers probably spread the
> American-adapted architectural form from there, along with the Anglicized
> pronunciation. Unlike my good friend Don, I can't bring myself to use the
> /ae/ even around others who are using it.

You can leave Houston out of that equation, as least the southwest sector.
--
Andrea Vine, avine at eng.sun.com, iPlanet i18n architect
"Stew my foot and call me Brenda"
--From "Angry Child" by Aardman Animation