4 ms·

Don't know what hard or soft supposed to mean in a hypothetically ambiguous context, but the `j` here is obviously a Voiceless velar fricative (`x` in IPA). Thi

• Karellen 3y ago
  ~~"obviously"? Why?~~ aha! see edit 2 That pronunciation had temporarily escaped me. I was trying to decide between a voiced postalveolar affricate d͡ʒ (hard) or voiced palatal approximant j (soft). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_postalveolar_affricate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_postalveolar_affricate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_approximant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_approximant Edit: "hard" and "soft" seemed like the most logical way to describe what I thought was a dichotomy, particularly as it's also often used to distinguish between the voicings of "c" and "g". Edit 2: Just read the whole FAQ (rather than searching for "pronunciation" or related terms), and noticed the "Where does the name come from?" entry, which mentions the Mexican origin, which is why "x" is "obviously" correct.
  • ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
    Regarding my usage of the "obvious": it would only be correct to say that it's obvious to me, sorry for that. The reasoning goes like this: The word uses the Latin script in its most basic form so it's most probably some western-European language, Romance or Germanic. The phonetic structure fits Spanish the best, compared to other languages that I have any superficial knowledge on, the -ul being the most telling bit.