I hace to share this with... well, not necessarily a British native, but someone who knows very well English culture. I need to solve a question that has remained in a corner of my brain for fifteen years!
2002, I was working in a fancy bar in Oxford. A client asked for a sherry, we started to talk and, as soon as he knew that I was Spanish (easy, because of my accent; even so, he was alredy in his third sherry, which shows that he was faster with sherry than with accents), he told me this strange theory: Spanish sound /x/ (fricativa velar sorda), like in "jerez", is a derivation from English sound /ʃ/ (like in "sherry"), originated in XVIII century by the pronunciation problems of that moment Spanish king (he didn't specify which one in the story); he was unable to pronounce the English word "sherry" and somehow that sound passed to all Spanish subjects. He wasn't drunk, though (the client, not the king).
Of course, the story is a delirious statement, but here comes my question: was this nonsense produced by that particular man, "inspired" by sherry, or is this nonsense some kind of "general theory" in England? I mean, have you ever heard something like this?
2002, I was working in a fancy bar in Oxford. A client asked for a sherry, we started to talk and, as soon as he knew that I was Spanish (easy, because of my accent; even so, he was alredy in his third sherry, which shows that he was faster with sherry than with accents), he told me this strange theory: Spanish sound /x/ (fricativa velar sorda), like in "jerez", is a derivation from English sound /ʃ/ (like in "sherry"), originated in XVIII century by the pronunciation problems of that moment Spanish king (he didn't specify which one in the story); he was unable to pronounce the English word "sherry" and somehow that sound passed to all Spanish subjects. He wasn't drunk, though (the client, not the king).
Of course, the story is a delirious statement, but here comes my question: was this nonsense produced by that particular man, "inspired" by sherry, or is this nonsense some kind of "general theory" in England? I mean, have you ever heard something like this?
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