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Spelling and pronunciation of "habanero"

Avon Barksdale

Avon Barksdale

Public service announcement: There is no ñ in the word "habanero". :D I see it spelled this way on a lot of websites, even by people who know a lot about chile peppers. I see it spelled that way in a lot of grocery stores as well.

I also hear it mispronounced frequently too, often by experienced chile pepper people. It is pronounced "awe-bah-nair-oh". The letter h is always silent in Spanish and there is no ñ sound like in jalapeño.

I'm not trying to be a douchebag or pick nits, it's just a pet peeve of mine. :D
 
It bothers me too when I hear it, but to tell you the truth I did not know the H was silent. I will still use the H. A hab is not an ab :)

Keep in mind you are talking about pronouncing a word in English, not Spanish. How do you say croissant, or marinara? I doubt you say "cwa saw" or "ma dee nada". If you don't have an accent sometimes it sounds funny to pronounce one word natively.

Even worse though, what's with Chipolte?! That's just plain getting it wrong.
 
thehotpepper.com said:
It bothers me too when I hear it, but to tell you the truth I did not know the H was silent. I will still use the H. A hab is not an ab :)

Keep in mind you are talking about pronouncing a word in English, not Spanish. How do you say croissant, or marinara? I doubt you say "cwa saw" or "ma dee nada". If you don't have an accent sometimes it sounds funny to pronounce one word natively.

Even worse though, what's with Chipolte?! That's just plain getting it wrong.
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What you wrote about pronouncing a word in English is spot on. This is becoming a common issue with our language. Now it is being acceptable to say culinary as if it is spelled cullinary. Due to frequent usage, and the fact that people understand what you are saying, the language is dynamic. This is not my complaint, just an observation. I also use hab...
 
you gotta remember, this is the US, not mexico and we southerners take a little bit of literary licence in our enunciation anyway... ;)
 
Ain't nothin' wrong with a "hail-a-peeno".
 
hey, it can work both ways, we just came through the Christmas season and i didn't hear anyone calling the baby Jesus, baby "who-lee-oh".

english north american could better spend their time correcting the laziness of english usage:
fir = for
dis = this
dat = that
kin = can
ta = to
bin = been

i listened to an Obama speech and was a little set back by the laziness, i won't even touch a Bush speech because, well, i was just....lost.
 
Fair enough points by everyone. :D

Burning Colon said:
i listened to an Obama speech and was a little set back by the laziness, i won't even touch a Bush speech because, well, i was just....lost.
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He is definitely not nearly as bad as Bush when it comes to English usage and grammar.

I did hear Obama say "We can control our own destiny" though. Another of my pet peeves, someone's fate or destiny by definition cannot be controlled. I actually saw today on national news a headline about the system being "broke". I almost threw up my mouth. :shocked: It's one thing for an average Joe to misuse broke/broken, but a freaking headline on the national news? They weren't talking about "broke" in the sense of having no money either. Embarrassing...

Don't even get me started on this "pre" prefix. Preheat, predestined, prerecorded, etc. :banghead:
 
Barkie, you're an animal, i thought i was the only one anal on english expression.

i am forgiving with spanish and french translations as many canadian expressions are from french saying, "vis a vis", "tout de jour" are common but there are others that unless you are from a certain region in Quebec you would have no idea what the hell they are talking about. french is taught in canadian schools from elementary through to highschool but it is parisan french, that taught in france, in quebec they teach quebecois, a regional french that really contains a lot of slang and unless you are from a certain region the slang can be so bad that even other regions of quebec can't understand you.

think of it as similar to the queen's english as oppose to common english.i now make a lot of mistakes in writing and every day have a hard time remembering how to spell words correctly, i even keep a thesaurus and dictionary beside me, perhaps its age, and i am not that old, only a half century, but remember computer talk when things existed like bit, byte, nibble, word that no longer exist and i have a computer science degree from the mid 80's and most of my lingo is gone. facebook, twitter........what else am i going to be expose too......oh ya, don't type in uppercase as you could be considered, losing it!
 
My personal solution is to use the other language rather than a faked-up so-called "english" translation, when that is at issue. If it's a french word, I pronounce it with french inflection, if spanish, that, etc. I'd much rather learn a real new word than b*stardize a word to make it somehow fit my native language. So far the language one that made me cringe the most was the slaughtering of "Pico" when I lived in L.A. - given that they generally know how to pronounce La Jolla, you would think "Pico" would be easy. But instead of pronouncing it like pee-koh, you can hear many Angelians pronounce it like pick-oh. Makes my skin crawl.

For grammar, misuse of there vs. they're vs. their, especially when I find it in business writing, makes me want to hunt down the author and slap him or her until he or she gets it right.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I find the lack of pronouncing the "L" in "yolk" and "folk" to be weird, even though it's correctly pronounced that way according to most any dictionary you pick up. I will insist on pronouncing the "L" regardless, and you're more than welcome to make as much fun of me as you desire, while I will in turn decide that you need to learn to stop going with the status quo.....
 
Avon Barksdale said:
Public service announcement: There is no ñ in the word "habanero". :D I see it spelled this way on a lot of websites, even by people who know a lot about chile peppers. I see it spelled that way in a lot of grocery stores as well.

I also hear it mispronounced frequently too, often by experienced chile pepper people. It is pronounced "awe-bah-nair-oh". The letter h is always silent in Spanish and there is no ñ sound like in jalapeño.

I'm not trying to be a douchebag or pick nits, it's just a pet peeve of mine. :D
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Thanks a bunch for the correct pronunciation Avon.

I have to admit that up until I read this thread I was saying "hab-an-air-oh".

dvg
 
I have to admit that up until I read this thread I was saying "hab-an-air-oh"
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i will continue to use this way to say habanero.

the plural of woman always gets me, on the rare occassion i hear someone pronounce it women but usually people say "wim men"
 
geeme said:
For grammar, misuse of there vs. they're vs. their, especially when I find it in business writing, makes me want to hunt down the author and slap him or her until he or she gets it right.
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They're not watching their P's and Q's up there in Ohio?

You're and your are two others that are often misused.
 
Burning Colon said:
think of it as similar to the queen's english as oppose to common english.i now make a lot of mistakes in writing and every day have a hard time remembering how to spell words correctly, i even keep a thesaurus and dictionary beside me, perhaps its age, and i am not that old, only a half century, but remember computer talk when things existed like bit, byte, nibble, word that no longer exist and i have a computer science degree from the mid 80's and most of my lingo is gone. facebook, twitter........what else am i going to be expose too......oh ya, don't type in uppercase as you could be considered, losing it!
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Hey, I can't spell either. I think anyone who claims to be able to spell in English is lying. :D We must have the most absurd phonetic system of any language. How do we get "bizzy" out of "busy"? I'm sure that frustrates foreigners to no end. The trade off is that we have damn near the easiest verb conjugation and grammar of any language in the world. I counted one time and there were, if I remember correctly, 53 unique conjugations of "comer" (to eat) in Spanish. In English we have 4: eat, eats, ate, and eaten. And 75% of the population doesn't even use the past participle "eaten". They say things like "I haven't ate anything" (which sounds like someone scraping a pan with a fork to my ears).

We even have words spelled the same way but pronounced differently depending on which word it is, e.g. live (verb) and live (adjective, like a live sporting event). Or produce (fruits and vegetables) and produce (verb, to produce something). :crazy:
 
its not that i am a poor speller, i use to be quite an effective communicator, in the past 5 years my skills are slowing slipping away and i am having a very difficult time remembering how to spell certain words. perhaps due to lack of interaction with like minded peers.

for 2 years i would dictate my kids weekly spelling lists, every day, they would get a list of 20 words and i would have them spell out the words, make up a sentence using the word, then dictate the words. if they incorrectly spelt a word they would have to say the word out loud, then spell it out loud, then write it out - 10 times. (of course if it was a simple word then only 5 times. by test time they always would get 100%. This year, no spelling, school doesn't believe in memorization, they believe it is not effective, mean while my 9 year old spelt the word cake, kak, on her grandmother's birthday card.

don't forget "read" and "read", to read a book, i read a book, the color red. Redd Fox.

just image learning mandarin chinese, with the 4 tonals, the word pronounced "shi", can mean yes, ten, to grow, poem, hog, lion.... this one word can have almost 100 meanings, ouch, that is a lot on one's brain.
 
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