Chinatown without Chinese
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Diana Zhang was in Lima, Peru last week, and this is what she saw:
Diana comments:
This is is what I found in Lima, Peru Chinatown! See this restaurant’s name and its romanization: 山海楼 (San Joy Lao). Since in Spanish — different from English — “j” is pronounced like /h/ (think of San Jose and Don Juan), therefore “Joy” is used to represent the sound “hoy”, which corresponds to 海 in Mandarin or Cantonese. :) I’m simply amazed at the localization of romanization methods, which adapts to different languages and their spelling / pronunciation rules at different places, such as Peru that speaks Spanish!
Not only was the Chinese signage in Lima's Chinatown limited, Diana said she didn't see any Chinese people there!
Selected readings
- "Bilingual Spanish-Chinese street signs" (8/21/16)
- "Local toponymic pronunciations in northwestern Ohio and northern Indiana" (7/4/22)
- "Prehistoric notation systems in Peru, with Chinese parallels" (4/17/21)
- "Multilingualism in Philadelphia's Chinatown" (12/14/19)
- "Taishan and Chinatown" (2/5/22)
cervantes said,
July 18, 2022 @ 7:05 am
No, in Spanish J is not pronounced like H in English. It's a palatal fricative, and since it doesn't exist in English San Jose becomes San Hozay. But that is not how it pronounced in Spanish.
Sophie said,
July 18, 2022 @ 7:57 am
Cervantes, what would be best way for a Spanish-language learner to pronounce J in Castillian? My Spanish teachers were all from Latin America and I was also taught to pronounce the J like English H. It wasn’t until I met people from Barcelona and Mallorca that I was told this was incorrect. What would be the most accurate approximation?
languagehat said,
July 18, 2022 @ 8:37 am
The -ch at the end of Bach, for those who don't say /bak/ for that. If you've never learned to pronounce a palatal fricative, I'm sure there are helpful videos.
Cervantes said,
July 18, 2022 @ 8:50 am
Sophie, that's surprising. In most of Latin America J is pronounced as in Spain, although in some dialects in intervocular J is more like zh. But I've never heard it pronounced like English H by a Spanish speaker from any country. (H in Spanish is always silent, by the way.) Languagechat is correct, if you listen to a classical music DJ with a plummy accent, they'll draw out the fricative to demonstrate how hip they are.
Gregory Kusnick said,
July 18, 2022 @ 9:35 am
it doesn't exist in English
That may be putting it too strongly. Yech, blech, and similar expressions of disgust typically end with palatal fricatives.
Jonathan Smith said,
July 18, 2022 @ 9:39 am
Spanish "J" is not generally /x/ ~ /χ/, i.e. a voiceless velar to uvular fricative, perhaps phonetically palatal ahead of high front vowels? If so (my impression), it matches northern Mandarin "H" very closely, and Sophie is in luck if a Mandarin speaker…
Victor Mair said,
July 18, 2022 @ 9:47 am
Now we poor Anglophones will be all a mess when it comes to pronouncing San Jose, Javier, Jorge, Juan, and Jesus.
"How to Pronounce Jesus, Jose, and Juan in Spanish", Hongyu Chen, Speechling (May 30, 2017)
https://speechling.com/blog/how-to-pronounce-jesus-in-spanish-and-other-spanish-names/
Gene Anderson said,
July 18, 2022 @ 10:32 am
The "joy" implies Toisanese; Cantonese hai "sea" is pronounced hoi in that dialect.
As to Spanish j: it gets variously pronounced by Native American language speakers whose second language is Spanish. Sometimes like English h or even softer, sometimes quite rough.
Cervantes said,
July 18, 2022 @ 10:55 am
True Gregory, but those are non-lexical utterances. I think English speakers have difficulty putting it anywhere but at the end of a word. And by the way I think it would essentially be impossible to pronounce an H at the end of a word, so the Spanish word reloj (clock), for example, simply can't be pronounced with an H sound.
Victor Mair said,
July 18, 2022 @ 11:11 am
Title of a famous short article by David R. Knechtges, "Whither the Asper?" CLEAR, 1.2 (July, 1979), 271-272.
JorgeHoracio said,
July 18, 2022 @ 11:15 am
A minority of Spanish speakers, mostly from Central America, or the Caribbean, tend to use for J a pronunciation similar to English H. In Spain, Argentina and all or most of South America the sound, like Hat said, is similar to German ch in Buch, Bach, doch, (also, I believe, Scottish ch in loch) The sound is usually represented in English by kh (as in Khrushchev). This is useful only for English speakers who already know the sound. Most English, French, Italian speakers (and others) have a hard time at it.
I never heard it pronounced as zh by Latin American Spanish speakers. But zh is the usual pronunciation of J in Portuguese and French
Rodger C said,
July 18, 2022 @ 12:01 pm
I also doubt that Spanish J is ever pronounced zh outside Ladino, unless Cervantes knows some very peculiar dialect somewhere. Spanish Y, however, is zh in a number of places, and is going on to sh in Argentina.
cliff arroyo said,
July 18, 2022 @ 1:12 pm
IME Spanish j has a range of pronunciations depending on the area.
The 'smoothest' (closest to an English voiceless h) is maybe in the Caribbean, Spain is a lot more friction (maybe the most) and Mexico is somewhere in between.
tsts said,
July 18, 2022 @ 1:48 pm
@Gene Anderson: Note that while 海 is indeed pronounced "hoi" in Toisanese, Toisan is actually written 台山 so with a different character (台) that is also pronounced "hoi" in Toisanese but with a different tone (toih in Cantonese but t usually becomes an h in Toisanese).
But also, the last character 楼 does not mean old, but refers e.g. to a floor of a building; it is pronounced "lau" in Cantonese but "lou" in Mandarin. Maybe they got two characters wrong, and are actually trying to say 老台山 (Old Toisan)?
Jonathan Smith said,
July 18, 2022 @ 3:17 pm
"San joy lao" is entirely reasonable for Cant. saan1hoi2lau4(*2?) 山海樓; nothing suggests Hoisanese.
And I find zero basis for the palatal fricative descriptions above, so am sticking with /x/ in my broken Spanish for the nonce…
Michael Watts said,
July 18, 2022 @ 4:15 pm
Count me as another person surprised to hear that Spanish "j" represents a palatal fricative (as in Mandarin "xi") as opposed to a velar fricative (as in German "Bach").
If this is true, it needs to be explained why English speakers are inclined to perceive the sound as /h/ rather than the expected /ʃ/.
David C. said,
July 18, 2022 @ 5:53 pm
The Lima, Peru Chinatown is one of the most distinctive Chinatowns I have visited. When I was there several years ago, it was buzzing with activity and full of Limeños just having a good time. Lima is one of those few places outside Asia where it seems like local foods and customs have a heavy dose of Chinese influence and where many of the locals have Chinese heritage.
One of my favorite memories is walking into a restaurant also serving as a 燒臘舖 (siu1 laap6 pou3*2 ; Cantonese barbecued meat shop) in Chinatown, with a familiar display of roasted goose, char siu and the like, but no Chinese writing anywhere.
Posted on the wall were signs (vertical in the Chinese style, if my memory serves me right) for delicacies like "si llao gai" and "pachi gai" (豉油雞 soy sauce chicken; 白切雞 "white cut" chicken). Had to sound it all out to know what they were selling. I don't think the signs were accompanied by a Spanish-language description either.
I ended having dinner at a nearby pollo a la brasa type restaurant serving roast chicken and anticucho (I think I read the restaurant chain was founded by a Chinese-Peruvian.)
sh said,
July 18, 2022 @ 5:57 pm
"Jota glotal": /x/ ➔ [h]
The Spanish letter "j" (as well as "g" before vowels "i" or "e") is pronounced with glottal aspiration [h]. Characteristic of the Caribbean, Central America, Colombia, and Bolivia.
From: Voices of the Hispanic World (OSU)
Will Fitzgerald said,
July 18, 2022 @ 8:57 pm
You probably know this, but Peruvian Chinese food is more or less a distinct cuisine, and you can go to such a restaurant in Tampa, where the cooks look Chinese but all speak Spanish.
Tyman Ung said,
July 19, 2022 @ 12:57 am
1) zh– Buenos, Aires Sicilian Italian origin people
use this sound for y–, ll–, (etc?)
2) Cantonese for sea is hoi. English h–
vs. Putonghua/Mandarin kh—.
Hope that these help.
Tyman Ung said,
July 19, 2022 @ 1:03 am
3) white cut chicken is bakchitgai.
or in."Mandarin", baiqieji.
Bon appetit!
Andreas Johansson said,
July 19, 2022 @ 1:45 pm
In some old books I've seen "palatal" used to apparently include velars, maybe Cervantes has a similar usage?
maidhc said,
July 20, 2022 @ 2:59 am
Peruvian Chinese cuisine is something unto itself. There's a restaurant in Toronto's Chinatown that has a secret Peruvian menu.
We went there and asked for the secret menu, which of course is all in Spanish. That was a challenge for us because Peruvian Spanish is different from Mexican Spanish, which is what we are familiar with.
The clientele at the restaurant was unlike a typical Chinese restaurant in Toronto, having a lot of South American people chatting away in Spanish.
Despite a few linguistic challenges, we managed to order up a very tasty meal there.
Chas Belov said,
July 22, 2022 @ 12:01 am
My understanding is that 海 is also pronounced "hoy" in Cantonese.
KIRINPUTRA said,
July 27, 2022 @ 10:24 pm
[h] for "j-" is the Spanish I know & speak. Caribbean & Mexican, to be sure. We also use [h] for word-final "-s" much of the time.
God bless Perú.