2026-10-24 03:14 UTC
Replies (3)
-
@oldclumsy_nowmad@mastodon.social 2026-10-24 03:46
@elaterite@mastoart.social You could conclude that, since almost every conceivable pronunciation is in use, you can pronounce it any way you want. 🙂 However, as you seem to suggest, there is probably one pronunciation that signals that you are "in with the in crowd" of local residents. I lived in Colorado for a while. "Colorado" is a beautiful word, in Spanish. It took me months to learn to say "Kul-ra-duh". Perhaps that was because I was also struggling with the "Pooter River" (Cache la Poudre).
-
@allisonhooper@mas.to 2026-10-24 04:05
@elaterite@mastoart.social Will admit to “Anna-muss” pronunciation, having spent lots of childhood and adult life in the area with a white/cowboy background. 🤷🏼♀️
-
@josh0@babka.social 2026-10-24 04:05
@elaterite@mastoart.social one thing that I’ve definitely noticed in New Mexico is that there’s a large diversity of pronunciation. I suspect, but don’t quite want to assert that it correlates with background. For example, the town of Madrid. When talking to Anglo New Mexicans, I’ve almost universally heard it pronounced Mædrid, with the stress on the first syllable. I’ve even been corrected when I pronounced it like the capital of Spain. When talking to Hispanic New Mexicans, however, I’ve generally heard it pronounced exactly like the capital of Spain. My assumption is that it’s similar to the way Spanish names in Texas and Colorado are often pronounced the way an English-speaker might if they had no knowledge of Spanish pronunciation. Like with Amarillo, Texas. Except that in New Mexico there remains such a strong Hispanic presence that they’ve preserved their own pronunciation in the face of Anglo encroachment. It gets even more complicated when you realize that New Mexican Spanish is its own dialect.