Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

[venta]

On New Year's Eve, I was at a party where the conversation turned to Tex-Mex food. Someone mentioned a mysterious food item: chi-poht-lay. Huh?

A little querying determined that she was saying the word I'd pronounce as chi-pottle. Well, she's from Michigan, these things are only to be expected.

But then other right-thinking, British persons began saying that no, of course it was chi-poht-lay. No one says chi-pottle. I briefly considered they were winding me up, but it seems Wikipedia agrees with them.

Now, I'm pretty sure I've ordered things in restaurants that required me to say "chipotle", and no one has ever corrected me, queried it, or looked at me funny. Presumably no one has ever repeated my order back and chi-poht-layed at me, either.

So, have you all been secretly mocking me[*]? Humouring me? Assuming I knew and was mis-pronouncing for comic effect[**]? Have you all, in fact, been making the same mistake?

[Poll #1808125]


[*] Mocking me on the topic of smoked peppers, that is. Other categories of mocking are outside the scope of this question.

[**] I do this a lot with words. This means that when I genuinely don't know how to pronounce a word, no one realises. Which is nice, but potentially problematic when I'm in a situation where I'd normally quit mucking about. Di-TRY-tus, apparently, not DEE-tri-tus. ChrisC tells me he's been aware of me saying detritus wrongly for years, but assumed it was deliberate.

Comments

[metame.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard it said much, but I'd say chi-poht-lay with a note of question mark to check someone had understood.

I kinda assumed that chi-pottle was a UK version that was used even though it's not what your better informed Central/South/North American would say. Like we mispronounce other Spanish and Italian food with different degrees of abashedness.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I was taking that approach until a lot of Brits looked horrified at the very idea. Maybe I'll just assume that they're weird exceptions.

And dammit, remember the Empire! We can mispronounce anyone's words with a sort of grandiose denial instead :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, if a word looks sufficiently foreign it's a bit un-English to even try to pronounce it. So it might be necessary to go for something like: chih-pot-thingy.