Talk:chorizo

Pronunciation guide (even if rough) for non-Spanish-speakers (& preferably for non-phonetics-readers)

Hola,
I think we could really use a pronunciation guide for this.
The word is widely (mis)pronounced "chorit-so" in Australia (& probably the UK & NZ).
For those who come to Wiktionary looking for guidance on such matters, and also just to show respect to the Spanish language & culture, I think it'd be helpful if we could include a pronunciation guide to at least try to indicate something closer to the Spanish pronunciation than "chorit-so". I'm not sure how to best go about it at the moment (not knowing phonetics & also being new to Wiktionary), but if anyone else has any ideas, please share.
Muchas gracias--Tyranny Sue 06:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

This OK? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't confuse English pronunciation and Spanish pronunciation, especialy when you're thinking about what is "correct" or "mispronounced". Just as Spanish has borrowed English words such as jazz but pronounces them differently than in English, so English has borrowed words from Spanish with anglicized pronunciations. In the case of this word I have beenn able to find three English pronunciations published and in use. This is all normal when borrowing words from language to language. — hippietrail 00:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• I have started a topic in the Tea room to discuss the English pronunciation of this word: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Tea_room#English_pronunciation_of_chorizo — hippietrail 08:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Why are some of the footnote references linked and some not? This is confusing and looks like a mistake. —Michael Z. 2009-04-24 14:45 z

What do you mean? –They’re all linked. One difference is that two of them are only used to support one assertion each; those ones are linked by the carets at the beginning of the references, as opposed to subscribed numerals. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh. It's even more confusing than I thought. I see that the pronunciations are numbered with raised numbers after the brackets, which look more like footnote markers than the footnote markers. Fixed.[1]

Whence comes the impulse to inappropriately raise text? —Michael Z. 2009-04-24 20:06 z

More pronunciation issues

Here are all the IPA transcriptions currently listed in the English Pronunciation section of our entry for (deprecated template usage) chorizo:

1. /ʧoˈɾiθo/
   • /ʧɔˈɹiθɔ/
   • /ʧɔˈɹiːθɔ/
   • /ʧɒˈɹiθəʊ/
2. /ʧoˈɾiso/ (not actually included ATM)
   • /ʧɔˈɹisɔ/
   • /ʧɔˈɹiːsɔ/
   • /ʧəˈɻisoʊ/
   • /ʧəˈɻiˌsoʊ/
3. */ʧoˈɾizo/ (hypothetical form for the schema’s sake; not included in the entry)
   • /ʧəˈɻizoʊ/
   • /ʧəˈɻiˌzoʊ/

Right, how to fuse these?:

• I think that [ɾ], [ɹ], and [ɻ] can be regarded as allophones for this word, since the alveolar tap doesn’t occur in RP and only exists as an intervocalic allophone of the alveolar plosives (<t> and <d>) in Gen.Am.
• Likewise, Gen.Am.’s [ɔ] should be regarded as equivalent to RP’s [ɒ] for this word, because Gen.Am. doesn’t have the latter, but usually uses [ɑ] in its place; [ɒ] and [ɔ], both being rounded vowels, are closer to [o] than [ɑ] is.
• /i/ vs. /iː/ is a simple difference in RP–US phonemic representation; in Gen.Am., enPR: ē = /i/ = enPR: i, but in RP, enPR: ē = /iː/ ≠ /i/ = i.

Those three fusions accepted, we’re left with the following elements of variation:

1. initial /ʧo—/ vs. initial /ʧə—/

   — The latter is more Anglicised in having undergone vowel reduction because of being in an unstressed syllable.

2. [s] vs. [θ] vs. [z] in the final syllable

   — The former two phones imitate the pronunciation of Latin-American and peninsular Spanish, respectively, whereas the latter substitutes the usual English pronunciation of the English letter zed.

3. short or long vowel / diphthong in final syllable

   — Naturalised English pronunciation favours the diphthong here, despite the fact that the Spanish vowel is short; the short vowel is easier to maintain, however, in the plural.

4. no stress or secondary stress on final syllable

   — Only Merriam–Webster’s prescribes the secondary stress; any guesses as to why it came about?

   Merriam-Webster stopped being prescriptivist when they released their famously descriptive Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary almost half a century ago in 1961. So I would say it came about because their lexicographers found it to be a common pronunciation during their research. — hippietrail 12:33, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Those combinations yield twenty-four possible meaningfully-different pronunciations; however, they are not all likely to exist. /ʧo—/ will probably tend to coincide with final-syllable [s] and [θ] more often, as will /ʧə—/ with final-syllable [z]; short vowels in the final syllable will probably be more common when coöccurring with [s] or [θ] (and with the more weakly-inflencing /ʧo—/), but the long vowel / diphthong will predominate as a general rule; I don’t have a clue what the pattern would be with the secondary stress, though judging from experience I’d assume that the singly-stressed pronunciations are more common than those which feature the secondary stress.
OK, so assuming you agree with me (and if you don’t, I welcome your corrections), how do you suggest we can present this information in the entry? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• I have seen in several print dictionaries an in the Merriam-Webster online entry for this word parentheses () used for optional parts of pronunciations. MW uses them to indicate optional secondary stress. My efforts to use parentheses this way on Wiktionary a few years ago was not well received however.
• English phonetics does not allow "short vowels" in word-final position. Only the long vowels, diphthongs, and unstressed schwa and -y. So any pronunciation ending in a short o rings false for me.
• Personally I love Spanish chorizo when I'm in Spain and hate Mexican chorizo when I'm in Mexico. In those countries I generally use the local Spanish pronunciations, but at home in English-speaking Australia I almost never come across the word at all so I can't attempt to say which variant is the more common pronunciation in English. I may be able to check Webster's Third and the full OED soon however. — hippietrail 16:20, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Isn't this a little over the top? Why are we including four different /r/ symbols, when we know that /r/ is variable in English, and three of these don't appear in the English IPA chart which is linked? Stress is somewhat variable too, so let's pick the representative ones, instead of permutating every combination.

Unless we base this on an actual scientific speech survey, and start putting brackets [ ] around the transcriptions, this seems too detailed to me.

By the way, CanOD pronounces it /tʃəˈriːzoː/, with its convention of /oː/ for the vowel in no. And I must add that one of my local Italian groceries makes a very delicious Argentinian chorizo. —Michael Z. 2009-04-25 15:29 z