That one is ancient history. My 6yo is currently fighting
her friends and their parents alike to make them realize and learn that there is an "L" at the end - it's "axolotl", not "axolot".
It's technically not just “an L” if we're trying to avoid Anglicizing the pronunciation, right? The “tl” cluster is its own affricate with a lateral fricative as its tail, or am I misremembering?
What is scientific about this pronunciation? Axolotl is not the scientfic name (its Ambystoma mexicanum), and usually the goal with pronouncing scientific names is for the listener to be able to spell the name after hearing it (at least for botany, which is what I am familiar with).
In the Spanish of the 1490s and early 1500s, there was a "SH" sound, spelled with X, the same way there is today in other Iberian languages like Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, or Basque. They got to Mexico and wrote many indigenous words with "SH" sounds (like "Mexico" and "axolotl") with X. Shortly after this, the pronunciation shifted to the modern Spanish J sound (which in much of the Spanish speaking world is like the CH in loch, but in some countries is like an H sound).
I am Spanish myself and didn't know about this fact until recently. It explains many "old-fashioned" spellings like México, Pedro Ximenez, or Don Quixote (nowadays usually written as Quijote, but you will find the old spelling in other languages).
For those who are curious enough, this article explains the evolution of the Spanish sibilants and why our languages uses J and Z in a very different way from pretty much any other language:
My favorite example: It also explains why "sherry" wine comes from "Jerez" ... Because it used to be Xerez at the time that most European languages learned the name.
Well, actually I suppose the hardest part is to pronounce the other consonant hispanicized as -tl at the end (a soft lisp)
[ɬ]
voiceless
alveolar
lateral
fricative
[0]
in a sufficient fluent manner (except you happen to speak e.g. Welsh, there the sound is written as ll so by happenstance the "axolotl" found in Wales can be pronounced fluently by the Welsh) otherwise you are saying it half correct which is arguably worse.
So let the nahuatl speaking people have a laugh at your expense for pronouncing it the germanic way or if you want to go unnoticed do it the evolved spanish romanic way, a good middle ground I guess.
Anyway I think it is generally a lot fun to hear words pronounced "wrong" by foreigners or having trouble hearing/pronouncing it "right" respectively heavy accents are hilarious icebreakers (:
The Welsh or Icelandic "ll" is not quite the same. That's a "voiceless lateral fricative", lacking the alveolar break that earned it the "t" in "tl" for the Latinized spelling. It's much closer than most languages get, but it is a different sound.
The Nahuatl consonant is a "voiceless alveolar lateral affricate". It is a single constant represented with [tɬ] or, more correctly, with a tie bar between those two glyphs: [t͡ɬ].
I stand corrected you are right there is no isolated use of [ɬ] in nahuatl as a phoneme it is used only in the context of an affricative /t͡ɬ/
I got ahead of myself in trying to isolate the sound [ɬ] for untrained ears.
To get back to the original point though if I'm not mistaken again in standard mexican spanish /ʃ/ as a phoneme is lost entirely and only appears in the affricative /t͡ʃ/? So in all likelihood the original /ʃ/ in axolotl would be pronounced by way of habit as [t͡ʃ] (unless again you have say a argentinian dialect where e.g. "ll" (/ʝ/) in llamar is pronounced as [ʃ]) if you try to "correct" mexican spanish speakers.
They can spell/pronounce things differently than we do and it's all cool either way. It's very common for animals to have different spellings, pronunciations, or even completely different names between languages. If you add time and regional axes, the same variances can be true even when keeping with the same language!
That is how Mexico used to be pronounced in Old Spanish. Kind of like how X is sometimes pronounced "sh" in Portuguese. The name was based on an indigenous name which had the "sh" sound there.
Is there a word for foreign loan words that have their pronounciation changed?
I feel like axolotl fits in that category as it’s a commonly known animal in the English speaking world, that has a common pronounciation remarkedly different from the language it came from.
Loan words going from English -> Asian languages like Thai and Japanese such as “beer” becoming “beeru” fit the same vein.
That’s like telling the Japanese that “cutlet” is not pronounced “katsu.” It ain’t gonna change. Or even having southerners pronounce squirrel with two sellable [autocorrect : syllables] Good luck with that!
We're speaking English, so why even entertain the idea of pronouncing "axolotl" differently, in that case? The Japanese say "en", but that doesn't seem to inspire anyone else not to say "yen".
Are you sure that x is an ecks and not a chi that straightened up a bit?
The thing about script and type is they only really work by prior agreement.
There is a set of marks on the page that we all agree on "is" an axolotl. How we choose to say that out loud is up to the individual. On the other hand, if we were to converse with you directly ... vocally ... then you could tell us how you say the name and if we were convinced that you were at least Mexican, we might follow your lead.
Script, type and sounds rarely match up precisely, ever.
I live in a town called Yeovil (Somerset, UK). I have a mug with at least 65 different spellings of the name over the last ~1900 odd years. It started off as Gifle "bend in the river" in a Saxon language. We have had a "great vowel shift" in "english" and three different varieties of "english" noted since then, just in these parts, let alone elsewhere.
The place name was spelt as Evil or Euil for a while! No-one batted an eyelid because the concept of the grammar nazi was a long way in the future and spelling was pretty random in general. Ivel, Ivol, Givelle and many more have been documented.
Please record how you say the name and make it available. Fiddling with text will never cut it.
I have a feeling you're fighting a losing battle here
Prenounciation and correcting other's spelling is always a losing battle, probably for everyone involved.
*Pronunciation
4 replies →
That one is ancient history. My 6yo is currently fighting her friends and their parents alike to make them realize and learn that there is an "L" at the end - it's "axolotl", not "axolot".
It's technically not just “an L” if we're trying to avoid Anglicizing the pronunciation, right? The “tl” cluster is its own affricate with a lateral fricative as its tail, or am I misremembering?
Every scientific battle is worth fighting for!
Scientific study of languages generally admits that language drift eventually.
1 reply →
What is scientific about this pronunciation? Axolotl is not the scientfic name (its Ambystoma mexicanum), and usually the goal with pronouncing scientific names is for the listener to be able to spell the name after hearing it (at least for botany, which is what I am familiar with).
In Spanish, it's "ajolote".
In the Spanish of the 1490s and early 1500s, there was a "SH" sound, spelled with X, the same way there is today in other Iberian languages like Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, or Basque. They got to Mexico and wrote many indigenous words with "SH" sounds (like "Mexico" and "axolotl") with X. Shortly after this, the pronunciation shifted to the modern Spanish J sound (which in much of the Spanish speaking world is like the CH in loch, but in some countries is like an H sound).
I am Spanish myself and didn't know about this fact until recently. It explains many "old-fashioned" spellings like México, Pedro Ximenez, or Don Quixote (nowadays usually written as Quijote, but you will find the old spelling in other languages).
For those who are curious enough, this article explains the evolution of the Spanish sibilants and why our languages uses J and Z in a very different way from pretty much any other language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanis...
My favorite example: It also explains why "sherry" wine comes from "Jerez" ... Because it used to be Xerez at the time that most European languages learned the name.
Was a bit disappointed that, in the Spanish dub of X-Men, it isn't pronounced "Profesor Javier".
Well most non nahuatl speaking mexicans simply call them by the spanish traduction, ajolote.
That's nice for them, but how will I prove my intellectual superiority if I don't have a historically accurate pronunciation?
Well, actually I suppose the hardest part is to pronounce the other consonant hispanicized as -tl at the end (a soft lisp)
[ɬ] voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [0]
in a sufficient fluent manner (except you happen to speak e.g. Welsh, there the sound is written as ll so by happenstance the "axolotl" found in Wales can be pronounced fluently by the Welsh) otherwise you are saying it half correct which is arguably worse.
So let the nahuatl speaking people have a laugh at your expense for pronouncing it the germanic way or if you want to go unnoticed do it the evolved spanish romanic way, a good middle ground I guess.
Anyway I think it is generally a lot fun to hear words pronounced "wrong" by foreigners or having trouble hearing/pronouncing it "right" respectively heavy accents are hilarious icebreakers (:
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_...
You're close.
The Welsh or Icelandic "ll" is not quite the same. That's a "voiceless lateral fricative", lacking the alveolar break that earned it the "t" in "tl" for the Latinized spelling. It's much closer than most languages get, but it is a different sound.
The Nahuatl consonant is a "voiceless alveolar lateral affricate". It is a single constant represented with [tɬ] or, more correctly, with a tie bar between those two glyphs: [t͡ɬ].
I stand corrected you are right there is no isolated use of [ɬ] in nahuatl as a phoneme it is used only in the context of an affricative /t͡ɬ/ I got ahead of myself in trying to isolate the sound [ɬ] for untrained ears.
To get back to the original point though if I'm not mistaken again in standard mexican spanish /ʃ/ as a phoneme is lost entirely and only appears in the affricative /t͡ʃ/? So in all likelihood the original /ʃ/ in axolotl would be pronounced by way of habit as [t͡ʃ] (unless again you have say a argentinian dialect where e.g. "ll" (/ʝ/) in llamar is pronounced as [ʃ]) if you try to "correct" mexican spanish speakers.
No the "X" is pronounced "ten" like in "Mac OS X"
Makes sense. I am running MacOS Tahoetl.
If you want it to be pronounced "sh", just write it "sh".
They wanted it to be pronounced 'x', so they wrote it 'x': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl_orthography
They can spell/pronounce things differently than we do and it's all cool either way. It's very common for animals to have different spellings, pronunciations, or even completely different names between languages. If you add time and regional axes, the same variances can be true even when keeping with the same language!
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And "valet" is supposed to rhyme with "ballot" not "ballet" but you'll still sound like an idiot if you say "take your car to the val-it"
What's your reference? Cambridge: /ˈvæl.eɪ/ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/valet
(britannica[0], merriam-webster[1])
[0]: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/audio?word=va%2Alet...
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/valet
Your Merriam Webster source has "val-it" as the first pronunciation (but I think in this case both are correct and valit is less common)
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Drink some clarit with the valit over a good filit.
Jeeves (the gentleman's personal gentleman) is a valet that would be pronounced VAL-et.
Nobody says it your way - https://youglish.com/pronounce/axolotl/english
Or like Meshico
That is how Mexico used to be pronounced in Old Spanish. Kind of like how X is sometimes pronounced "sh" in Portuguese. The name was based on an indigenous name which had the "sh" sound there.
> Kind of like how X is sometimes pronounced "sh" in Portuguese.
Including this case! México is still pronounced with the "sh" in Portuguese :)
If you're speaking Spanish yes.
Is there a word for foreign loan words that have their pronounciation changed?
I feel like axolotl fits in that category as it’s a commonly known animal in the English speaking world, that has a common pronounciation remarkedly different from the language it came from.
Loan words going from English -> Asian languages like Thai and Japanese such as “beer” becoming “beeru” fit the same vein.
Given the damage to the abdomen, we might infer it was axed a little.
That’s like telling the Japanese that “cutlet” is not pronounced “katsu.” It ain’t gonna change. Or even having southerners pronounce squirrel with two sellable [autocorrect : syllables] Good luck with that!
> two sellable
I'm a southerner and we generally have squirrels in plentiful quantities, so it's never occurred to me to sell them. /s
Mepps buys the tails, they make fishing lures from them: https://www.mepps.com/squirrel-tail/
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[dead]
"Shocolate"? Who says it like that?
People speaking languages other than English.
We're speaking English, so why even entertain the idea of pronouncing "axolotl" differently, in that case? The Japanese say "en", but that doesn't seem to inspire anyone else not to say "yen".
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Not really - it is [t͡ʃ] (“ch”) not [ʃ] (“sh”).
1 reply →
Any self-respecting Aztecophile. They're also the cause of startup names dropping a vowl. Insufferable.
Are you sure that x is an ecks and not a chi that straightened up a bit?
The thing about script and type is they only really work by prior agreement.
There is a set of marks on the page that we all agree on "is" an axolotl. How we choose to say that out loud is up to the individual. On the other hand, if we were to converse with you directly ... vocally ... then you could tell us how you say the name and if we were convinced that you were at least Mexican, we might follow your lead.
Script, type and sounds rarely match up precisely, ever.
I live in a town called Yeovil (Somerset, UK). I have a mug with at least 65 different spellings of the name over the last ~1900 odd years. It started off as Gifle "bend in the river" in a Saxon language. We have had a "great vowel shift" in "english" and three different varieties of "english" noted since then, just in these parts, let alone elsewhere.
The place name was spelt as Evil or Euil for a while! No-one batted an eyelid because the concept of the grammar nazi was a long way in the future and spelling was pretty random in general. Ivel, Ivol, Givelle and many more have been documented.
Please record how you say the name and make it available. Fiddling with text will never cut it.