jaymar01

Delta Ad Expertly Trolls Angeleno Pronunciation Of 'Los Feliz' To Sell LAX To Mexico Flights

Everyone else can go home because Delta Airlines has officially won the niche marketing game. There appears to be a wall-sized ad on Hyperion Avenue near Tracy Street* from the airline advertising their LAX to Mexico flights with the ultimate in creative taglines: "Go where everyone agrees how to pronounce 'Los Feliz.'"

The airline is, of course, riffing on the fact that the Angeleno pronunciation of the neighborhood (los FEEL-uz) is, um, wrong. Or at least it differs from the actual Spanish pronunciation of the phrase (los fey-LEASE).

http://laist.com/2017/02/28/delta_los_feliz.php

Bowgie

I'm pretty impressed with that bit of micro-market marketing.

I'm not Hispanic, but I stopped pronouncing LA's harbor area as "San PEE-dro" a long time ago. That one is especially embarrassing.

HonoraryOrange

Wait, do people down there really pronounce it that way? With so many people (even non-latinos) who speak Spanish? ... is wrong with them? lol

ULDB65

Despite all the hispanic names in California, common pronunciations are often funny. How about the biggest city, L.A.? You know, La La Land, as in "Laws Angeles"? Even though it it is really LOS Angeles...

Widgets

Angeles is also mispronounced.

TTT

Don't even try to get Sepulveda pronounced correctly.

Zorak

A (non-Hispanic) friend of mine has a rant about how people pronounce the name of the town Vallejo in northern Calif. It's commonly pronounced va-LAY-ho -- he says if you're going to bother pronouncing the "-jo" correctly then why not "-ll-" also, i.e. va-YAY-ho? :

Widgets

Does he mean "va-yeh-hoh"?

va-yay-ho would be spelled Valleijo.

Howste

La Jolla can be amusing at times.

Doc Savage

One that grates on my ears is Los ROBE-ulls just north of Slow.

PRWeezer

Well, it depends on the part of the world where you are while pronouncing the word. In Argentina, for example, a double-L is pronounced "zha/zhow". In other words, if you tell someone you flew ATL-EZE-BRC for a fabulous golf, cycling or in my case, a ski vacation, at the Llao Llao hotel you would say...the "Zhow Zhow" hotel (and it's a fabulous one at that: http://llaollao.com/en/). Just ask my fellow travelers "Ah-zha-son" (Allison) and "Bi-bee-ah-na" (Vivian).

And at what point do you look pretentious/ridiculous...like the other day talking to my husband's colleague flying JFK-ATL when she was just back from FCO and looking for future visits to Italy. 'Oh, you didn't get to the Amalfi coast, you must! CAH-pri is not to be missed', said w intentional sarcasm. It's like saying, 'we're just home from Venezia.' Who does that?

Here in ATL I don't know that there's a way to mispronounce Peachtree but it does need a qualifier if you're giving directions (i.e. street, circle, road, battle avenue, etc.). And don't forget, at the airport Delta = Delta Air Lines, military code for concourse and taxi way Delta substitute pronunciation = Dixie.

pbarnette

Bear in mind that, demographically, California is very, very different from what it was as recently as the '70s. Prior to the '80s the Latino population was pretty tiny. A lot of the pronunciations developed during the time when Latino populations were much smaller.

Zorak

I got free tickets to a Giada cooking demonstration in Las Vegas a few years ago and she consistently pronounced "spaghetti" in an drawn-out exaggerated Italian fashion, "spah-GEH-tee". It's on the menu too (they spell out the pronunciations of all the various dishes).

http://www.giadadelaurentiis.com/upl...nter_20165.pdf

The food at her restaurant at the Cromwell is amazing, but still

(insert Seinfeld "papier mâché" clip here)

18sas

To my ear, the J, Y and LL are all pronounced the same in Argentina. It think it's technically more like the German "CH" (the one followed by a front vowel) than a "ZH" sound though.

Don't get me started on English speakers who use the Spanish "TH" sound. Like "We just got back from EE-BEE-THA." i.e. Ibiza.

PRWeezer

I thought the spa-GHE-ti was some kind of inside joke/insider drinking game for her verbally on her TV shows, I've never heard that inflection in real life in Italy. That's sort of insulting to provide phonetics for simple pasta but not for arancini (a-run-chee-nee) or dolce (dol-chey). I have to admit ciliengne was a new Italian word for me so I google'd...Trader Joe's calls it "see-lay-genie" which I'm told is wrong according to my Italian instructor, and my brother who has lived in Italy multiple times over the years, who said to pronounce every syllable, but with rules like ch = k as in chianti and ci = ch as in ciangiale (chin-gal-ay/aka wild boar).