Talk:Junta (terminology)

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[edit] Split

Both the accompanying article and the Dab (currently at Junta, but probably bound for Junta (disambiguation), which currently Rdrs to it) need attention to the inter-lang lks, which i have for now left in place in both pages (which means that probably half of them are wrong). No article lks to the accompanying article, and only the one Dab, but it may get a few when lks to the Dab are bypassed (which i hope to get to).
--Jerzy•t 10:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] English pronunciations

I fact-tagged the idea that English speakers give "junta" an Englis-style J sound because of Italian giunta; i doubt that greatly (it had never occurred to me to wonder what means "junta" in Italian, let alone how to pronounce it, and i think the "joonta" and "junta" pronunciations, by Americans at least, are just ignorance or laziness preventing respecting the Spanish pronunciation. (IMO Americans know it comes from Spanish (but are likely to be surprised, as i was, to realize it didn't arise in Latin America). Bear in mind that Italian is less related to English than German or French, and most of us mispronunce both the V and W in Volkswagen, and many French words.
--Jerzy•t 10:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I was tired, and forgot to add this: Another factor that may contribute to using the usual English sound of J as the initial sound of junta is perception of the word as assimilated into English, rather than (as earlier) being clearly a word of another language. I offer some examples of this:

  1. The common noun (i.e. noun that is not a proper noun) "quixote", meaning a person with the attributes of Don Quixote, has two recognized pronunciations. One is kee-HO-tay (reflecting the Spanish spelling, as the proper name does with all educated American first-language speakers of English), and the other is KWIKS-oat.
  2. The corresponding adjective, "quixotic", presumably not spelled identically to any Spanish word, is given only the pronunciation kwiks-AHT-ic in the dictionary i routinely use.
  3. The second word of the French-language opera Don Quichotte (don't ask me how to justify how Massenet arrived at it) is pronounced by serious American opera fans kee-SHOAT, respecting the French pronunciation of Massenet's French title (however that spelling and pronunciation may be related to the Spanish name), as if respecting Massenet's creation of a French name and not trying to Anglicize it.
  4. The French-derived phrase "en route" is pronounced "en ROOT" by most Americans (even tho some prigs like me say "awn ROOT" despite being incompetent in the language).
  5. The German "Füherer" (roughly "FUR-er) is usually "FYOOR-er", and Reichstag (properly "RIKHE-shtahg") is usually "RIKES-stag".
  6. "Renault" ("ray-NO") is commonly "reh-NAWLT".

So (although "HOON-tuh" probably predominates), i think the occasional "JUN-..." and "JOON-..." (or, perhaps i should say -- since the English sound of J is sometimes mistaken by non-native speakers for ZH -- DZHUN-... or DZHOON-...) may be better explained by the perception that the word has been assimilated, since the Italian "giunta" is so obscure to (at least) Americans (whatever may be true among native English speakers as a whole).
--Jerzy•t 20:10 & 20:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)