Chile

[Jonathan Lighter]

I cannot remember a time when the usual pronunciation among people I heard
using the phrase (99.9% of them media people) was *not* "koo de grah."

So it's been around - speaking conservatively - for at least thirty-five
years, and in the most prestigious U.S. circles. (But perhaps the "blow of
fat" is what they meant.)

JL

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 7:49 AM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Chile
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I posted on this earlier this year. Chile was Chilly in the USA until
> sometime in the 80's when there was a surge of hypercorrect pronunciation
> of
> Spanish, at which time it became Chee-lay and the folks became Chee-LAY-uns
> instead of just Chillyuns. This culminated in 1990 with a hilarious skit by
> Jimmy Smits on SNL making fun of the whole over-pronunciation mania. It
> wasn’t just Chile, of course, it was anything Spanish that happened to come
> up. The Smits skit tackled such things as En-shee-LAH-Thah and
> Burrrrrrr-EE-Tho as well.
>
> Another foreign-language hypercorrection that I have watched become popular
> over the last 10 or 20 years or so is the substitution of Coup de Grace
> (pronounced Grahss), which is the strike/blow of mercy, with Coup de Gras
> (pronounced Grah) which of course is the Strike/Blow of Fat. I used to hear
> Coup de Grah occasionally, but now seem to hear it almost exclusively.
> Apparently Americans think no French word ever has an ss sound on the end.
> The Coup de Gras always gives me interesting mental images.
> DAD
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Paul Frank
> Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010 12:39 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Chile
>
> :      Re: Chile
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
>
> As a native speaker of Chilean Spanish, this is something to which
> I've paid close attention since my family left Chile a few terrifying
> weeks after September 11 (1973, not 2001). In the 1980s, most
> Americans I heard pronounce the word Chilean said "ChilAYan"; most
> Brits said "Chillyin" (to borrow your spellings). I was living in the
> UK and in East Asia at the time and hanging out with Brits and
> Americans (and Chileans too). In the 1990s I began to notice ChilAYan
> from British mouths, including BBC presenters. I'm less sure about
> "Chilly" and "Chee Lay." I've always said "Chee Lay" or even "Chile"
> (pronounced the Spanish way). Incidentally, one of my pet peeves in
> the 1980s was the affected pronunciation in the middle of English
> sentences of "Nicaragua" and "El Salvador" as if they were Spanish
> words rather than perfectly good English words that ought to be
> pronounced the English (or American) way. You sometimes hear this on
> NPR: an American speaker pauses for a millisecond to pronounce some
> Spanish place name or personal name as if she or he were speaking
> Spanish. But I digress...
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
> Paul Frank
> Translator
> German, French, Italian > English
> Neuchâtel, Switzerland
> Tel. +41 77 4096132
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 3:21 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Back in my day (1950s), "Chile" was pronounced like "Chilly."
> >
> > "Chilean" was pronounced as "chillyin." But since then "ChilAYan" has
> become
> > the media standard because it sounds more Spanishy. Sort of.
> >
> > Similarly "Chilly" has become the media "Chee Lay" because it sounds more
> > Spanishy.
> >
> > However, today I heard Tony Harris on CNN utter a new pronunciation that
> > sounds like an American trying to sound Spanishy no matter what:
> "ChillAY."
> >
> > Like _Ole_!
> >
> > JL
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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