# Chilean (pronunciation)



## jos.dan

Hello everyone!
What is the most common pronunciation of the demonym "Chilean"?

The pronunciations included on forvo are:
1) /ˈtʃɪli.ən/
2) /tʃɪˈliːən/
3) /tʃɪˈleɪən/

On Forvo, to Americans pronounced the word the third way, while one person from the UK pronounced it the first way. How is it were you live?

Thank you in advance! 

Edit: typos and made the post easier to understand — I realized it was a bit messy before


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## kentix

I generally say and hear the first one but sometimes the third one. I haven't heard the second one.

It might be helpful to number them for the answers to come.


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## owlman5

jos.dan said:


> /tʃɪˈleɪən/.


I generally hear this version in the U.S. People who use it are probably making some effort to copy the sounds of Spanish vowels.


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## dojibear

I hear and say "CHIL-ee-en", not "chil-AY-en".


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## entangledbank

I've always said, and as far as I know heard, /ˈtʃɪli.ən/, but who knows how often you actually hear this? Then where I work now, I used to overhear Spanish-speakers (who sometimes telephoned people in Chile for their job), and I heard them saying /tʃɪˈleɪən/, influenced by the Spanish vowels.


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## Roxxxannne

I hear and say chil-AY-en in NYC, where people say CHEE-lay for the country itself.


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## jos.dan

Thanks for all the answers so far!



owlman5 said:


> People who use it are probably making some effort to copy the sounds of Spanish vowels.



That makes sense. No I wonder what the most common pronunciation for the country is, but maybe that's content for a new thread?



Roxxxannne said:


> ... where people say CHEE-lay for the country itself.



I always thought it was CHI-lee 



kentix said:


> It might be helpful to number them for the answers to come.





jos.dan said:


> 1) /ˈtʃɪli.ən/
> 2) /tʃɪˈliːən/
> 3) /tʃɪˈleɪən/



I edited my post so it was easier to understand. So, according to what people have answered so far, I'd say the most common pronunciations are:

1) US: 3, 1
2) UK: 1


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## natkretep

I just heard it on the news. There was an American who said /tʃɪˈleɪən/ and that just struck me as being unusual at the time. I say /ˈtʃɪliən/. I pronounce Chile like chilly or chilli.


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## kentix

natkretep said:


> like chilly or chilli


My sense is that's true for the majority of Americans, also ... so number 1.

More Spanish-aware people have the option of 3 if they are interested, but they might still pronounce it as 1 because they consider it the English pronunciation.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Roxxxannne said:


> I hear and say chil-AY-en in NYC, where people say CHEE-lay for the country itself.



Unless I am speaking Spanish, I have never in my life referred to the country as CHEE-lay.  Like natkretep above, I always say "chilly", exactly like the word for brisk weather, or chili pepper.  However, as someone who -- in addition to being completely bilingual in both fancy-shmancy intellectual English and working-class Noo Yawk City English -- actually speaks fairly decent Spanish, I do find myself using both CHIL-lee-un and chi-LAY-en interchangeably, depending on the circumstance.


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## elroy

The traditional pronunciations in US English are “CHI-lee” (exactly like “chilly”) and CHI-li-uhn.”  Over the past 10-20 years, some US English speakers have started to use pronunciations that are closer to the original Spanish: CHEE-lay and chi-LAY-uhn.


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## Hermione Golightly

I've never heard the Chi-LAY-un version here, not that we talk much about Chile, but all the same ... . 
Far fewer British people speak or have a good knowledge of Spanish. If they used their knowledge to correctly pronounce it, it would be considered ridiculously show off-y.


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## elroy

I personally don’t like the “lay” versions.  They sound affected to me.  It could be because I grew up with “chilly.”


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## Roxxxannne

jos.dan said:


> I always thought it was CHI-lee


Maybe I'm mishearing bilingual Spanish-English speakers in NYC.  To me it sounds like they're saying CHEE-lay.


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## Myridon

Regardless of the pronunciation of the country, the only time I hear the adjective is in the phrase "Chilean sea bass" (a pretty-sounding marketing euphemism for  the very ugly Patagonian toothfish) which I have always heard with LAY in the middle.  The LEE version sounds very odd to me.


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## elroy

Roxxxannne said:


> To me it sounds like they're saying CHEE-lay.


 They are!


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## kentix

That's an approximation of the Spanish pronunciation and there are lots of people with Spanish-speaking backgrounds in New York.

And not just in New York. The Spanish language influence here in general is far greater than that in the UK so more people are from a Spanish-speaking background even if English is their first language, more people speak it as a second language, more people have traveled in various Spanish-speaking countries and been exposed to it, more people have taken it in school, we have entire American-based TV networks in Spanish, including the news where countries are mentioned in Spanish, etc. etc. Using a Spanish type pronunciation is natural for many of those people, not affected. Saying Nicaragua how it's said in the UK would be affected and odd. But saying it in a hard, true Spanish accent in the middle of an otherwise English sentence would also be odd, generally. Most of the time it's somewhere in the middle - Spanish vowels pronounced in an American tone. But it will vary from person to person how far toward the truer Spanish accent they well go - based on their life experience.


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## Roxxxannne

elroy said:


> They are!


Yes. See my comment in #6.  
In #14, I was answering jos.dan in #7, who implied, at least as I understood it, that Spanish speakers in NYC say what sounds like CHI-lee. So I answered that if jos.dan, who knows Spanish and recognizes Spanish accents infinitely better than I do, thinks that in NYC people say CHI-lee, then maybe they do and I just don't hear what a practiced listener hears.
If I could give kentix two thumbs up, I would.


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## Hermione Golightly

Strange how things happen! One of the questions on _Gardeners' Question Time _(BBC Radio 4 today) was about growing Chilean plants in the UK. One of the panel pronounced Chil-AY-an while another said CHILL-y-un.
I suppose that if you speak French you might be tempted to say Chill-AY-un. But  a French-speaking Brit would know better.


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## elroy

Roxxxannne said:


> I was answering jos.dan in #7, who implied, at least as I understood it, that Spanish speakers say what sounds like CHI-lee.


 No, he was saying he thought it was always CHI-lee in English.


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## Roxxxannne

Mystery solved.


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## JulianStuart

My sister (a modern languages major, by the way ), who has been living in Chile for 30ish years speaks English when she comes home to the UK  and Spanish when she is in Chile. When speaking English, she says Chilly and #1 above for the adjective.  When speaking Spanish she uses the Spanish pronunciation.  

Luckily for her the Spanish pronunciation of her _name_ is close to English pronunciation, so she doesn't have to face the challenge that someone like Maria Hinojosa does, when speaking English: must she mangle her own name to approximate an "English pronunciation" or say it as normal with the Spanish pronunciation in the middle of a perfectly (AE) English sentence? David Sedaris has a humorous vignette about the pronunciation of Nicaragua, addressing the same question )


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## natkretep

Can I ask if those who say CHEE-lay also pronounce Mexico, which is closer to home, in a Spanish style - _ie _MEH-hee-koh  [ˈmehiko]  or MEH-khee-koh [ˈmeçiko, ˈmexiko]? Or is Chile just different from Mexico?


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## owlman5

natkretep said:


> Can I ask if those who say CHEE-lay also pronounce Mexico, which is closer to home, in a Spanish style - _ie _MEH-hee-koh [ˈmehiko] or MEH-khee-koh [ˈmeçiko, ˈmexiko]?


I haven't noticed any such tendency among the anglophones in my part of the world, Nat. In their comments about Chilean fish and wine, people generally use something like /tʃɪˈleɪən/, but the initial vowel in that word is shorter than what I would expect to hear from a native Spanish speaker (chill Ay un rather than chee Lay un).  The standard Anglo pronunciation for Mexico is widespread here in Colorado, even among people whose parents immigrated from Mexico.


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## natkretep

Thanks, Owlman. I'm just wondering why there is a difference in treatment for Chile and Mexico then.

The  /tʃɪˈleɪən/ pronunciation might be to do with other things, because pronunciations with /eɪ/ are now widespread for _Galilean _too, and I don't think it's to do with making it sound like the original. Similarly also _deity_.


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## kentix

I think it's a bigger jump than the Chile jump. There is no English word that I can think of where x is pronounced like an English h/Spanish j. But there are plenty of words in English where i is pronounced like ee - machine, for instance.


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## owlman5

You're welcome, Nat.  I don't hear many references to Chile beyond those that occur in references to wine and fish from that part of the world. Having some familiarity with Spanish, many anglophones in Colorado might well use something like C_hill ay _rather than _Chill ee. _

A few people like to drop Spanish words and pronunciations into their English conversations.* This sort of thing can sound pretentious and annoying to people who don't speak Spanish, of course. I have noticed the same unfortunate tendency among a few people who have learned some French at some point in their lives. Fortunately, I don't notice it often.

*I'm referring to native English speakers here, not native French or Spanish speakers.


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## elroy

To my knowledge, this partial adaptation to Spanish phonology does not happen with the names of any Spanish-speaking countries other than "Chile" ("Argentina" is pronounced with a hard G, not an "h" sound; "Mexico" is pronounced with an X, not an "h" sound; "Venezuela" is pronounced with a Z and not an S; the H in "Honduras" is pronounced; "Cuba" is pronounced with a glide between the C and the U; etc.)

I wonder if it has to do with the fact that pronouncing a final "e" in English as an "ee" sound is fairly rare (not many examples come to mind: "finale," "posse," "synecdoche," "machete") so it may be the case that this particular departure from Spanish pronunciation is particularly striking and rubs people the wrong way because they find it so jarring.

As an Arabic speaker, there are some names, like "Qatar" and "Qur'an," that I can't bring myself to pronounce with an American accent, because they sound ridiculous to me.


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## User With No Name

owlman5 said:


> This sort of thing can sound pretentious and annoying to people who don't speak Spanish, of course.


But I think "Chile" may be a special case. I (who speak decent Spanish) use the Spanish pronunciation of "Chile" when I say it in English, even though I don't do so for other Spanish-language place names.


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## owlman5

User With No Name said:


> I (who speak decent Spanish) use the Spanish pronunciation of "Chile" when I say it in English, even though I don't do so for other Spanish-language place names.


As long as you don't go overboard with attempts to drop Spanish into English conversations with people who don't know any Spanish, you probably don't annoy anybody with your pronunciation of _Chile. _It certainly wouldn't annoy _me. _Like many people in the U.S., I also speak and read a fair amount of Spanish although it isn't my native language.  

_Chill Ay un _sea bass and _chill Ay un _wine are normal pronunciations in restaurants in this part of the U.S. I don't recall ever hearing  anybody using _Chill ee un _although that pronunciation is certainly a possibility in the English-speaking world.


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## kentix

tamale = American English tuh-mah-lee

But mole is pronounced mo-lay. It would probably be too ridiculous to pronounce it in line with standard silent e conventions and I have never heard mo-lee. Maybe that is said by some people.

Mole sauce - Wikipedia

It's probably useful to point out that a lot of Mexican words, like those with x, aren't inherently Spanish but rather Aztec/Nahuatl. The English pronunciations are different than the Spanish pronunciations which are different than the Nahuatl pronunciations. Apparently they pronounced the sound represented by x as a sort of sh sound.


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## elroy

"tamale" is an interesting example!  In Spanish it's actually "tamal," and "tamale" is a back formation that arose due to reanalysis of the plural form, "tamales."  In Spanish the singular is "tamal" and the plural is "tamales" because you have to add an "e" between the singular form and the plural "s" when the singular ends in a consonant.  The plural "tamales" must have been borrowed into English first, and then reanalyzed as "tamale" + "s" as opposed to "tamal" + "s", yielding the singular "tamale" (if we had borrowed the singular "tamal" first, we may have wound up with "tamals" as a plural form!)

I have heard at least one bilingual Spanish-English speaker use "tamal" in English, probably for the same reasons some people say "CHEE-lay" in English: "tamale" probably sounds as dissonant to him as "CHI-lee" sounds to some Spanish speakers (and as dissonant as "Cutter" and "ka-TAR" sound to me ).


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## natkretep

Thanks for all your comments. It looks as if Chile is a special case for various reasons then. I just wondered whether the more Spanish-style pronunciation was more widespread. (For example _junta_ is more Spanish sounding in AmE and more English sounding in BrE.)

(Sorry, elroy. I pronounce Qatar like catarrh.)


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## kentix

Yes, definitely "hoonta" in the U.S. (with oo like in book).


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## JulianStuart

natkretep said:


> Thanks for all your comments. It looks as if Chile is a special case for various reasons then. I just wondered whether the more Spanish-style pronunciation was more widespread. (For example _junta_ is more Spanish sounding in AmE and more English sounding in BrE.)


Spanish is a lot more widespread in the US than in the UK.  A big part of the western US spoke Spanish before it became part of the US and then came immigrants, some speaking English and some from (the part of) Mexico (that remained Spanish) and central America and bringing more Spanish. (US English 240 million, Sanish 41 million for language spoken at home; UK the proportion is much lower). So AE speakers hear the Spanish pronunciations much more often than BE speakers (even if many like Spain for holidays/vacations).
(We should not forget the version that rhymes Chile with while. )


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## kentix

Also, European Spanish is not the same as the Spanish over here, just as American English is different from UK English. To the extent that Britons are exposed to Spanish by vacationing in Spain, they are not hearing exactly the same thing that we're familiar with. Pronunciation is somewhat different and Mexican Spanish in particular is heavily influenced in some ways by the Aztec/Nahautl past (all those X's in place names, foods, etc.). It's different from the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America, too. It's like they have 20 versions of AE.


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## Sasha Ivanov

<Added to this thread. Nat>

I've researched it myself and all the dictionaries give its pronunciation as CHILI-uhn,
chi-LAY-uhn never given even as a substandard, regional, yet, everywhere, on TV, and even in one of my dictionaries with audio pronunciation after the written IPA transcription  /'tʃılıən/, the female American voice actor pronounces it as chi-LAY-uhn!!!


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## Uncle Jack

The pronunciation is in OED, which lists
Brit. /ˈtʃɪlɪən/, U.S. /ˈtʃɪliən/, /tʃəˈleɪən/​


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## elroy

“chi-LAY-uhn” is a newer phenomenon, so I guess it hasn’t made it into dictionaries yet.

[cross-posted — I was going to add “or it’s in a dictionary but you it haven’t checked it” ]


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## kentix

Traditionally in U.S. English the first. With the spread of Spanish and Spanish-awareness in overall U.S. culture, increasingly many people use the second. Either one works.


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## london calling

kentix said:


> Yes, definitely "hoonta" in the U.S. (with oo like in book).


That's how I pronounce it too.


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## sound shift

Re. #1

I use 1).
I've heard 3).
I haven't heard 2).


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