Don Quijote

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.