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| How about a lesson in comparative linguistics disguised as an article about tacos? A recent one from Gastro Obscura: There’s No Right Way to Say ‘Taco’  An exploration of the ways our tongues—and our pride—twist around foreign words, and what that says about how we want to be seen. I'll give a pass to the subhead reference to "foreign words," as the site is obviously aimed at US English speakers. But it occurred to me that even if the headline is correct, and there's no right way to say 'taco,' there are myriad wrong ways to say it: 'extricated,' 'ashtray,' 'flugel,' and 'dimethylethylpropynol,' to name but a few. It wasn’t so much that my friend, a Brit who has lived in Los Angeles for many years, said the word “taco” differently than I do. The confounding thing was that it was difficult for him to hear the difference, and that when he could distinguish it, he insisted that his way was more correct, closer to the way a Spanish speaker would say it. He pronounced it “tack-oh.” If Brits (and Australians and Canadians, etc.) didn't pronounce things differently to USofAmericans, there wouldn't be distinguishable accents. One wonders if he also called his mom 'mum.' “There’s something very strange going on with that particular ‘A,’” says Lynne Murphy, a lexicologist at the University of Sussex who explores the differences between British and American English on her blog, Separated by a Common Language, and further in her book, The Prodigal Tongue. Oh, so this is an ad. Well, it's an ad for a blog and a book, so I can't fault it too much. The way the Brits pronounce “taco,” as well as “paella” (pie-elluh, with the English L rather than the Spanish LL), “salsa” (the first vowel rhymes with “gal,” the second with “duh”), and “Nicaragua” (nick-uh-rag-you-uh), among others, is a glaring siren of weirdness to an American ear. I remember the first time I heard pasta pronounced "pass-tuh" instead of "pahs-tuh," but I can't remember if that was British or just variant American pronunciation. What’s going on is a complex blend of tongue positioning, imperial history, code-switching, language exposure and accommodation, and an unconscious, or uncomfortably conscious, desire not to seem like you just got back from a semester abroad in Barthelona and brought with you an inability to see your friends rolling their eyes. Oh, imperialism gets thrown into the mix. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. Okay, not that shocked. I don't think I've ever actually heard it pronounced 'tack-oh' instead of 'tah-co.' What I do remember is that people who live in Nevada pronounce the first a like in 'van,' while non-Nevadans tend to pronounce the same vowel like in 'father.' Nevada is, of course, also a word of Spanish origin (from what little I understand, it translates to "snow," and if you're wondering why a state famous for being a desert is named after snow, just remember its western border is a very tall, usually snow-capped, mountain range). My point being that yes, we know that English speakers often mangle the vowel sounds of other languages, and vice-versa. And don't get me started on the dozens of ways different languages interpret the sound of the consonant 'r.' At any rate, the article dives into some of the vowel (and consonant) differences between languages, and even different dialects of the same language. I find it interesting, but no need to quote a lot of it. As is often the case in linguistics, it’s simpler to say how the British and American pronunciations are different than to explain why they ended up this way. One of the more prevalent theories among the linguists and Anglophones I spoke to was a basic lack of exposure. The U.S. has around 41 million native Spanish speakers, and around another 12 million identifying as bilingual... Whereas, as the article notes, Brits are more likely to be exposed to French instead of Spanish. This is a concept called language accommodation, in which speakers tend to modify the way they speak depending on the person or people they’re speaking to. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty cool superpower to have. This ties in to the code-switching concept mentioned above. Trying to impress someone? You might try to use longer, less common words to seem more intelligent. "Devour feculence." For some Americans, policing global Mexican food is a bit of a hobby. I feel kinda good that this is the first I've heard of this. I mean, I can understand Americans (in this case meaning "US citizens") having strong opinions on pizza, which is actually an American food, and hamburgers—I certainly do—but it strikes me as weird that we'd get all up in arms about other countries' interpretation of food associated with another country. It'd be like, I don't know, a Japanese person pushing away a dish of fries with gravy and curds and proclaiming "this is not poutine!" A word like “taco” is on its way to becoming, or is perhaps already, simply an English word. Oh, it definitely is an English word. Sure, it's of Mexican Spanish origin, but it's also an English word. Like "hors d'œuvres" is an English phrase, despite it being so French that it might as well be wearing a beret, carrying a baguette, and smoking a Gauloise. It's just a more recent loanword, so we're more aware of its linguistic/culinary origin than we are of words like, say, beef (French) or chicken (German). One fascinating aspect of English food words is that the reason we have both "chicken" and "poultry," for example, is that we got the animal words from German but the food words from French, probably because the French are demonstrably better cooks. (Please don't cut me if you're a German cook. German beer is superior; be proud of that.) One thing never brought up in the article: what is the literal translation of "taco" in English? I don't mean the food; I think we can mostly agree on what constitutes a delicious taco, despite differences of opinion on what should and should not go into one. But the word came from somewhere; apparently, that "somewhere" is something akin to the English "plug" or "wad." Why it came from that particular meaning, I can't be arsed to investigate right now. Anyway, I had no idea this was even a thing. I'm pretty sure I've only ever heard it pronounced "tah-co." And now I'm hungry; thanks, Gastro Obscura. |
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