Don Quijote

Does anyone know why Miguel de Cervantes' literary hero is spelled Don Quixote in English? And how is his name (the gentleman tilting at windmills, not the author) pronounced? Thank you.

It is spelled "Quixote" in English because that is how Cervantes spelled it. Look at the original title page. DON QVIXOTE DE LA MANCHA.

English speakers pronounce it "kee-HO-tee" or "kee-OH-tee." Old joke: I named my donkey Hodee.

Edited ot add: one dictionary gives chiefly British KWIK-s@t. (@ is a schwa, rhymes with hut)

Edited by: nutraxfornerves

Wow, only now I realize that this must be the source of the adjective "quixotic". I feel stupid. But why is that word pronounced quick-so-tic and not qui-ho-tic?

Quixotic :It is pronounced kwik- zotic because that's how we thought it was pronounced ~ in Britain at least
As nutrax's extract indicates, in Britain until recently even educated people pronounced the name of the hero Don "kwik 'zot" When I say recently in the last 50 years we have learnt it should have been rendered "kee-ho-tay"

That X is there because of ancient spelling. In general Spanish it evolved into a J but in other languages the original spelling was preserved. A similar situation you have with México and Texas, in Spanish the correct pronunciation of those names are Méjico and Tejas.

In Spanish is pronounced kee-ho-teh (regardless of the spelling).

In archaic Spanish, X was often used instead of J (although both with the same sound = modern J). The RAE tried to homologate and standardize the use of J and X, and it is standardized in modern Spanish from Spain; but in Mexican Spanish, for instance, there are a lot of anachronisms and old-fashioned phonetics/spellings, so the sound of the X is still used in different ways, sometimes in the old way (instead of J), or in the modern way (as X), or in alternative ways such as SH or even as a long S, especially in native Mexican words. That's why in Mexico, Mexico is written Mexico+ while in Spain it is written +Mejico.

This is off topic but other examples from Mexican Spanish with non-standard/old use of X are:

Xalapa (pronounced Jalapa)
Xochitl, Xochimilco (sochitl, sochimilco)
Xoloitzquintli, Xola, Xicotencatl (sholoizquintly, shola)
Exequias (ecsequias = traditional Spanish pronunciation)

There are hundreds of other words like the above, and this is confusing for Spanish speakers who are not Mexican.

Edited by: palindroma (accents removed)

Edited by: palindroma

suez_channel says that "even educated people" used to pronounce it kwiksit (my transcription; my classmates and I were startled in the late 60s when a professor (US) pronounced it like that).

Yes, and even educated people continue to call Paris PARiss and Muenchen MYOOnick. When they're speaking English. Kwiksit was the pronunciation of the word in English. The correct pronunciation -- in English. Starting towards the end of the 19th century, English speakers started trying to approximate foreign pronunciations of foreign words, often falling about halfway there as with Dahn Kee HO tee (US).

Byron rhymes Don Juan with "new one" (which in context was pronounced new'un). That was also the correct pronunciation. Still is, if you're talking about Byron's poem.

{quote:title=VinnyD wrote:}{quote}
suez_channel says that "even educated people" used to pronounce it kwiksit (my transcription; my classmates and I were startled in the late 60s when a professor (US) pronounced it like that).

Yes, and even educated people continue to call Paris PARiss and Muenchen MYOOnick. When they're speaking English. Kwiksit was the pronunciation of the word in English. The correct pronunciation -- in English. Starting towards the end of the 19th century, English speakers started trying to approximate foreign pronunciations of foreign words, often falling about halfway there as with Dahn Kee HO tee (US).

Byron rhymes Don Juan with "new one" (which in context was pronounced new'un). That was also the correct pronunciation. Still is, if you're talking about Byron's poem.

Lol. I'm imagining Man of La Mancha being staged in the West End and someone belting out "I am I, Dawn Kwiksit! The Lord of La Mancha!" The U.S. pronunciation may not be on the nose, but at least it's in the ballpark. "Kwiksit" is not even in the same time zone.

I also remember that when I was doing year-abroad in the U.K. and first heard Don Jew-Won I did an actual spit-take. But, of course, you're right that Byron's metrics require that pronunciation. It may not be rational, but I have much less of a problem with manglings of geographical names than I do with people's names. Geographical names will inevitably be shaped by long-term linguistic and historical considerations, but when it comes to people, real or fictional, it seems to me one should try for at least a "near miss."

palindroma, What a good thorough, SHORT explanation. I was about to explain the same thing, but you did it so much more succinctly.

One VERY minor correction. The Royal Academy of the Spanish language (damn, I hate not being able to write in Spanish!) NOW says that, and I paraphrase, "if Mexico and Mexicans WANT the name of their country spelled with the archaic "x" rather than the more modern "j", then THAT is now the ONLY correct spelling that anyone, writing in Spanish, should use. After all, it's THEIR country."

I thought it was pretty big of them to admit that it was they, the RAE, that was in error, NOT the Mexicans!

But the Guia Roji maps of Mexico, probably because they are distributed worldwide, still show Xalapa as Jalapa.

No longer an issue except for orthography because the medial consonnant is disappearing except in music.

Wonders never cease. Dictionaries adopting descriptive methodology. Larousse dropping rants against anglicisms.
RAE bending to multiculturism. Webster defining with frequency instead of antiquity. Are there others?

Thanks for all the detailed explanations regarding the pronunciation. Most (Austrian) German speakers also say kee-ho-teh, but some Germans pronounce it kee-sho-teh. As for the spelling, I feel a bit stupid now because I should have known that. I think there was even a discussion about the old Spanish X having been replaced by a J in Spain on SiT some time ago.
I believe another non-standard use of X is Uxmal (pronounced Ushmal).

Uxmal is a pretty standard Maya word. This is not a Spanish, but a Maya name and in modern Maya all "sh" sounds are written "x".

palindroma says that in archaic Spanish x and j had the sound of modern Spanish j. Are we sure of that?

I ask because of the English word sherry, formerly sherris, deriving from the name of Jerez/Xerez de la Frontera. That suggests that that sound had a sh-like sound at the time of the borrowing (16th century maybe?), or else we'd be calling it herry. The transcription of the Mayan sound sh as x suggests the same thing,at about the same period (if my guess about the date of the borrowing of sherris/sherry is right).

{quote:title=istvan wrote:}{quote}
Thanks for all the detailed explanations regarding the pronunciation. Most (Austrian) German speakers also say kee-ho-teh, but some Germans pronounce it kee-sho-teh. As for the spelling, I feel a bit stupid now because I should have known that. I think there was even a discussion about the old Spanish X having been replaced by a J in Spain on SiT some time ago.
I believe another non-standard use of X is Uxmal (pronounced Ushmal).

There is a theory that Don Quixote really was a translation from a Moorish tale and not Cervantes's own. I don't remember the details, but at least part of it hinged on the idea that the "x" in Quixote was the letter substituted by the translator for the Arabic letter "sh" (ش). Whatever the truth, his Turkish name is "Don Kişot" (where ş = sh).

Vinny, you are undoubtedly correct. The X in Spanish has been a continuously evolving thing (or maybe a dialectic one). Cervantes used it as a English H or a Castilian J (which is the German phoneme CH), no one is exactly certain which, later Spanish orthographers transliterating the many indigenous names in Mexico, assigned it to the phoneme represented in English by SH. Spanish purists still prefer the German CH phoneme for the Spanish J and G before e or i, but most of the world simply pronounces it as the English H.

The Turkish pronunciation is presumably borrowed from the French, who write it Don Quichotte.

And this French wikipedia pagesays that the French pronunciation preserves the original Spanish pronunciation, as does the Italian Chisciotte and the Portuguese Quxote, pronounced with a "sh".

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To boxxla:
in Don Quixote, Cervantes speaks all the time about an arabic author called Cide Amete Benengeli (if I recall correctly). Cervantes plays a game with the readers about the fact that he was not the original author, but it's just a game.

The wiki article is very interesting. It seems there was not only a Spanish spelling reform, but also a subsequent sound shift. The original pronunciation of X might also explain something else. The book about Spain I've been reading says that the name of the region La Mancha is derived from the Arabic manxa (that's the transliteration they use; the word meaning dry land). So at the time, the X obviously represented a ch sound as well.

Edited by: istvan
My French is not very good, so I misunderstood the wikipedia article. It says that the sound shift preceeded the spelling reform.

{quote:title=kamo wrote:}{quote}
--
To boxxla:
in Don Quixote, Cervantes speaks all the time about an arabic author called Cide Amete Benengeli (if I recall correctly). Cervantes plays a game with the readers about the fact that he was not the original author, but it's just a game.

Yeah, but this was saying that the whole thing was written by an Arab.

Doesn't "x" represent English "sh" in Catalan and Galician?

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Yes.

So it appears that the English kept Cervantes's spelling but then just pronounced it as if it were an English word, Kwiksit. The French and the Italians changed the spelling so that the word be pronounced, by their rules, more or less as Cervantes did. I don't see a reason to prefer one practice over the other but I wonder if anyone else here can.

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Vinny,
wouldn't it "kwiksawtee" the literal pronounciation in English, rather than "kwiksit"?
How come it became "kwiksit"?

Another thing I'd like to add is that, undoubtedly, the original title was "El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha", but I'm not sure that the text inside keeps the X for don Quixote. I've been trying to surf on the net and find a picture of a first edition of the text but I couldn't find any. The editions I've seen, and the one I have at home (obviously quite recent) have Don Quijote instead of Don Quixote. My theory was that they write X instead of J for cap letters, just like they use V instead of U (actually, the original title was EL INGENIOSO HIDALGO DON QVIXOTE DE LA MANCHA).

Quix in English pronunciation would be kwiks.

Ote in English pronunciation would be oat. E.g. tote, rote, wrote.

Unstressed vowels in English (like the second in Kwiksoat) tend to reduce to a schwa which is what I'm trying to reproduce by writing "kwiksit". I was afraid that if I wrote kwikset people would think of the Kwikset lock company, where the second syllable isn't reduced to a schwa: people pronounce that as if it were the two words Quick Set.

Anyway, kwiksit is a pretty good approximation of the pronunciation of the one person I ever heard pronounce it in the former English style (except for people who were talking about the pronunciation).

You may be thinking of Truman Capote. Capote is not an English-derived name. His stepfather, whose name it was, was Cuban.

I don't think you're right about the capital x and j but I could be wrong.

"So it appears that the English kept Cervantes's spelling but then just pronounced it as if it were an English word, Kwiksit. The French and the Italians changed the spelling so that the word be pronounced, by their
rules, more or less as Cervantes did. I don't see a reason to prefer one practice over the other but I wonder if anyone else here can."

Well, we can try. If a name is primarily a name, i.e. a sound without a clear meaning, the spelling is merely a way to record the sound so that the reader knows who the writer is talking about. In that respect it makes more sense to transcribe it to something that is pronounced the same. quihote, chihote, kihote, whatever.

It's not what we do nowadays with names in Latin-script languages. A Spanish Jose is Jose in English and not Hosay. But we try to say Hosay and not Dyoze because we know that's more or less the Spanish pronunciation. In Cervantes's time, what with no television and radio, people may not have known from the script what sounds a Spanish writer would have aimed for when he wrote Quixote. It would help the reader to transcribe it to something pronounceable in their language approximating the sound.

It may be different if the name has a clear meaning. Someone called "Flower" in English poses different problems. Translate it as "Fleur" in French, or Flaouere (with an accent grave on the first e) or just Flower (pronounced Flohver or even Flohvay)?

According to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
>Printers and book sellers of Don Quixote reissued the first edition of the novel without editorial intervention or commentary. The editio princeps of the novel's first part (Madrid, 1605) was the basic text reprinted throughout the seventeenth century in Spain as well as in the rest of Europe. It was not until the eighteenth century that a more "scientific" approach to the novel began to appear. In 1780 the Spanish Royal Academy "corrected" Cervantes' masterpiece with its publication of a handsome four-volume edition of the novel. For the first time, editors included a "critical" introduction, comprising a biography of the author, an "analysis" of the novel, a chronological/historical survey of Don Quixote's adventures, a series of engravings, which placed many of those adventures literally before the eyes of readers, and a map of Spain in order to follow Don Quixote's itinerary.

Here is a picture of internal text of a 1757 Spanish edition. The text is clearly "Quixote". Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavellero D. Quixote de la Mancha. Tarragona, 1757. It's not until an 1833 edition that I see"Quijote".

Maybe this will help: Cervantes Collection Pictures of early Spanish editions.

{quote:title=VinnyD wrote:}{quote}
So it appears that the English kept Cervantes's spelling but then just pronounced it as if it were an English word, Kwiksit. The French and the Italians changed the spelling so that the word be pronounced, by their rules, more or less as Cervantes did. I don't see a reason to prefer one practice over the other but I wonder if anyone else here can.

You mean aside from taking a mellifluous name and turning it into something that sounds like cheap hairspray?

Well, how about in the interest of cross-cultural communication? I suppose it doesn't much matter if English speakers talking exclusively to other English speakers wanted to pronounce it Don Hairspray, or what you will, but surely there's something to be said for having folks on more or less the same pronunciation page so that an English speaker can refer to "a Don Quixote" and be understood by his French, Italian and Spanish colleagues with little interference. Plus, I know that if I heard a non-native speaker, not just mispronounce, but entirely mangle the name of a famous character from English literature, I'd have difficulty restraining an impulse to correct him.

Zashibis: Leaving aside the fact that one man's mellifluousness is another man's cacophony (lots of English speakers find that Spanish j sound harsh on the ear), the advantages of the English over the Franco-Italian system are manifold. (Now that I think of it.)

For one thing, the English system allows the possibility of changing the pronunciation if we decide to imitate the Spanish pronunciation, as indeed has happened. The Italians and the French, on the other hand, are stuck with the archaic Spanish pronunciation forever.

For another, you assume that cross-cultural communication will take place through speech more than through writing. That's hardly the case in today's world. I imagine there are hispanohablantes who would not know who was meant by Chisciotte (if they saw it in writing), any more than they would know who "kwiksit" was (if they heard it). On the other hand, they will recognize Quxote even if that's not the spelling they use today.

Finally, if you're googling or otherwise searching for works about Cervantes's work, you will pull up English texts if you use his original spelling (along with Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, German, Dutch, some Spanish, etc.). You won't find anything in Italian or French unless you already know to use Chisciotte or Quichotte.