In a coffee shop in Cuernavaca this past week one person stood out, not because of his looks, but because of the nonsense he spoke. This guy was breaking all of the rules and it only got him deeper into trouble with the others at the table.
At one point the conversation turned to discussing the differences between President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and the immediate past president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. When most people in Mexico speak of López Obrador they refer to him with his initials AMLO pronounced as a single word.
Thus, AMLO is pronounced as an acronym read as a single word: AHM-loh (phonetically: /ˈɑːmloʊ/).The nickname is an acronym created from the first letters of his full name, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The first syllable (AM) is pronounced AHM in Spanish, rhyming with the word mom (not like the English pronunciation of am). The second syllable (LO) is pronounced loh, using a long “O” sound like in the word low.
If you want to say his full name, it is pronounced ahn-DRAYS mahn-WEHL LOH-pez oh-brah-DOR.
As the conversation continued one English speaking resident referred to AMLO, correctly as AHM-loh. and was immediately attacked by another English speaking Expat who informed the first expat that it was pronounced as Am-lo rather than Ahm-lo. He even repeated it slowly three more times as though he was speaking to a child.
When most English speakers want to speak a word that is in another language they first “see” the word in their mind and pronounce it as they would in English, thus AMLO might be incorrectly pronounced as AM LO, rather than with the Spanish AHM LO.
A third English speaking Expat resident, spoke up to tell the gentleman that he was wrong and pronounced the name as AHM LO using the English pronunciation and explained that the letter A is pronounced as Ah in Spanish.
Two Mexicans sitting at the table were kind enough to also assist the gentleman in that the correct pronunciation was AHM LO, not AM LO.
The gentleman that was incorrect grew more red-faced as he was outnumbered, but still he did not want to admit that he was wrong. At that point, he informed everyone at the table that he was a Certified Spanish Teacher and that he was fluent in Spanish.
Language proficiency is typically divided into six distinct stages, ranging from absolute beginner to native-level fluency. The most widely recognized scale used to measure this is the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). While the teacher never stated his level of expertise, and whether had a Master’s degree, which is the minimum to quality for an instructor position, or a Ph.D. in Spanish, Hispanic Linguistics, or Latin American Literature which is a standard requirement for anyone to each Spanish on a university level.
And, as with a great number of foreigners attempting to work as a Spanish teacher, he might have only purchased a six week course from a private (and unaccredited) company in Mexico for $1,300 MXN pesos ($75 USD) and received an ELE training certificate.
One of the Mexicans at the table went so far as to ask how having a certificate could possibly imply that the person holding the paper could always be right in everything that was said or that he did not fall asleep in class.
Apparently the gentleman was not having any of that and argued that his pronunciation was correct and everyone at the table was wrong. Thus he managed to offend people from five countries that were seated at the table. The conversation switched to another subject and most people were polite enough to not look toward the offensive person in order to avoid any further poor behavior from him.
What did we learn from this story. By all means attempt to speak Spanish when in Mexico, but when you are not aware of the pronunciation of a word ask a local Spanish speaker for assistance. Be aware that as in any country there are different pronunciations of a word and every attempt should be made to use the local pronunciation. When in a group of people, never create an argument by being rude to others.
Author: G. William Hood
Author, Columnist, Educator, Epistemologist, and Publisher
