How do you pronounce "Vallejo"?

Thank you, WickyWick, for bumping this thread back up because I would have never seen it.

Eric, Great thread!

DUSTER

So a quick recap to date 5-15-14

• Vallejo = Vah-YEH-hoh
• Tamiya = Tah Mee Yah 
• Hasegawa = Hah Say Gah Wah
• Gunze = Goon za(y)  Not Gun zee.
• Zvezda = it is pronounced as it is spelled.(per Tim Kidell)
• Italeri =  i-tal-air-ee;   think Italy with "air" between the l and y.    

Others:

Hiroshima =  Hee Roh Shee Mah , Not  Hero-She-ma

Nikon = nee con,  Not   nigh con

Any more?

Along similar lines,

I'm building the M1008 CUCV by Miniman Factory and had this question:

Rob Gronovius

Sprueone - Right on! Good info. BTW, how is the CUCV phonetically pronounced? Whenever I'm keying this into a post, my mind is verbalizing it in my head as, kook-Vee, the "oo" like the in the word, "spoon"

Rob Gronovius - It's pronounced Cuk Vee (rhymes with "yuk" sounds like cup)

DUSTER

 

Revell , I'm pretty confident about, thou it took awhile for ROG to become comfortable.

 

As an old flying model builder, I sometimes pronounce ROG as "rise off ground" :-)

It’s funny, I used to live next door to Costa Mesa (Coast-a Mesa), and now I live in Contra Costa (Contra Cost-a) county. Of course, I drove on “The 405” through Costa Mesa and now I drive “680” through Contra Costa county. Go  figure ...

I have often suspected that the way words are spoken is changed each time I have learned the "correct" way to say it.  I'm and not afraid of this, however, as I assume that eventually the changes will, one day, come back around to my way.

p.s. "vaw-YEAH-ho" gets my vote.

This is all true! I actually live in Solano County, and I was born in Vallejo, CA. The pronunciation of the town name - although it’s very strange and nothing like the Spanish pronunciation - is vul-LAY-oh. The town is named after General Vallejo, whose name by locals is actually pronounced correctly (vaw-YEAH-ho) for the most part (weirdly enough). 

GMorrison

If you are a Spanish speaker, the correct pronunciation is vaw-YEAH-ho.

If you visit the town of that name in the Bay Area, most folks, except those mentioned above, would say vuh-LAY-oh.

If you were a crew member on SSBN-658, you'd call her the "Valley-Jo".

 

Oh no doubt Rommel!

Under all this about what nationality says it this way versus that that way, you know that there's folks in Japan who stack the new TV on top of the old TV, folks in Croatia who find their ex-wife's Yugo when they mow the lawn, and folks in Mexico who lost five dogs when their porch collapsed.

Do they all say "Vaw-Yay-ho"?

NOT!

This has been interesting.  I wish some of you could visit here in Podunkville USA and hear how much a language can be butchered beyond all reason.  One example is that one word will have many meanings depending on the word in front of it or maybe behind it.  Such as "War"-----Cook War,  Gleck-trick War, and then, War ya'll at?  Our favorite material in modeling gets hammered too.---  Plaskit, and Plackstick.  There are many others.  I won't even go into the raping the names covered in this thread take.  Living here I have learned to speak four languages, English, Okie, Arkie and a smattering of Hick.  

I have always pronounced it Vah-lay-hoe.  And seems I pronounce a lot of things differently too from reading this thread...though I say "pronounce".  Really it is all notional since I don't have any friends who scale model (and thus no one to converse with about it), so all my "pronouncing" is done inside my fat head.   So I guess the only person who has to hear my butchering of words is....myself!

Brian

I'd pronounce it more or less like I do my screen name....

So a quick recap to date 5-15-14

• Vallejo = Vah-YEH-hoh
• Tamiya = Tah Mee Yah 
• Hasegawa = Hah Say Gah Wah
• Gunze = Goon za(y)  Not Gun zee.
• Zvezda = it is pronounced as it is spelled.(per Tim Kidell)
• Italeri =  i-tal-air-ee;   think Italy with "air" between the l and y.    

Others:

Hiroshima =  Hee Roh Shee Mah , Not  Hero-She-ma

Nikon = nee con,  Not   nigh con

Any more?  

How do I pronounce Vallejo? The best damn paint around for figures.

I still run into people who build It-ally-airy models or It-a-Larry (as opposed to It-a- Moe or It-a-Curly) .

As to place names, I grew up not far from Lake Chargaugamogmanchaugagogchabunagungamaug,

Then we have cities like Leicester (pronounced Lester, nice Lice Stir or Lie Chest 'Er) and Worcester (which can vary from Worse-ter, Wooster, or to locals as Wisstah but NEVER Wore Chest 'Er). Amesbury is Ames-bree, Chatham sounds like Chat-em, but Eastham is East Ham, not East-um. Amherst is Am-erst, not Am-Hearst. Locals call Clinton Clih In, Oxford is Ox -Fud and Billerica is Bill Ricka.

The nanny-bot will not let me tell you how we pronounce Suffolk and Norfolk the they don't rhyme with folk. 

Tim Kidwell

Same with Italeri (i-tal-air-ee; think Italy with "air" between the L and Y).

Tim Kidwell

Same with Italeri (i-tal-air-ee; think Italy with "air" between the L and Y).

Once was a time Italeri was spelt "Italerei". People used to say Ee tal air ay

Yes, Rex it has been fun - a little break from modeling to how to pronounce things we model or use in modeling. And, you know, not only do we 'butcher' words in languages not familiar to us but those that are familiar as well. I was born in OHIO but if you're from Ohio, a native would  pronounce it Oh-hi-a. I still can't correctly pronounce the maker of an ME109 or a FW190 but I do quite well with a North American P-51 (I think)!!

"I avoided going to places like Lake Butte Des Morts, Shawano and Lac Du Flambeau simply because I was too afraid to ask for directions."

picks self back up off of floor,,,,,,,,,thanks, I needed that laugh,,,,,,"umm, could you give me directions to Shawna,,,,,umm, Show anna,,,,,,umm, that place with the cool race track?"

I wish I could type out how I intentionally butchered Oconomowoc once when I went there for a convention, after one of the other guys from there couldn't say Menominee.

this thread has been a lot of fun, guys

Rex

I pronounce Tamiya as 'tam-my-ya'. Ah well... LOL!

TarnShip

geez, a Cheesehead that can pronounce Lac De Flambou and Lac Buttes Des Morts without making people giggle, and can't pronounce a Spanish word? (Boo Deh More)

Ooh yah, dontcha knoh?  Ha-ha-ha!  I moved here to Green Bay from the No. Virginia area back in '92.  I avoided going to places like Lake Butte Des Morts, Shawano and Lac Du Flambeau simply because I was too afraid to ask for directions.

Tim, thank you for the excellent information.  The next time I go into a hobby shop, I will FINALLY be able to ask for Vallejo paints with the utmost confidence (unlike the last time when I mumbled it out).

Eric

Having contact with Eugenie and Alex Vallejo (the mother and son team running Acrylicos Vallejo), I can tell you they pronounce their name the Spanish way (unsurprisingly). However, I have seen them graciously allow mispronunciations. I have contacts inside Tamiya, and Matt has met Mr. Tamiya on a number of occasions; Tarnship has it dead on. Our conversations with the folks at Zvezda reveal it is pronounced as it is spelled. Same with Italeri (i-tal-air-ee; think Italy with "air" between the L and Y).

Heh - I've been pronouncing Gunze as "gunz" too!

All the comments have been great!  Phil, I didn't even know I've been pronouncing Gunze wrong all these years.  I've never spoken it in conversation but, in my head, I've always pronounced it as "guns".  Oops!  But now I know.  :o)

As for pronouncing kit manufacturers in general, this is why I primarily build Monogram.  LOL!

And in case anyone is wondering, last night I had po-TAY-toes.

And for the photographers among us: Nikon = nee con not nigh con but I'm guilty of using the latter.

I'll throw in Gunze. Goon za(y), Not Gun zee.

Bick, in Japanese, there also are no sounds that have a consonant at the end or in the middle

so, no "hero" part in that word Hiroshima,,,,it can all be done with a chart or table,,,,,,,Hee Roh Shee Mah

and yes, as you say, there is no emphasis on a syllable

Japanese pronunciation is like math, there is no opinions involved in either,,,,,there is only the right way and the wrong answer

What a wonderful, curious but interesting thread. A spanish (and other) speaking friend of mine told me vallejo is pronounced vuh-yay-hoe. Dunno but I know what I mean when I want to order it. And further, before I retired I frequented Japan and my 'mentor' there told me the problem we Americans had with Japanese was not realizing that in Japanese no syllables in any groups are accented vis 'a' vis Hiroshima - you often hear Hero-She-ma but should hear Here-osh-im-a. Not much of a contribution but I've enjoyed the thread.

No there's only one correct pronunciation, and that's the version, or versions, used in the language of origin. I apologize if I've misunderstood your comment.

Other pronunciations are perhaps more understandable, or commonly used in different locations, but that doesn't make them correct.

I can't imagine how many ways Vallejo is pronounced in Spanish, but there must be a few, and I don't know anyone with that name to ask them.

I would guess that the most success in finding the stuff, outside of a LHS in Mexico, would be to say Vuh- LAY- Ho.

Eric,

From what I have observed, people respond to anything if they can figure out the English letters behind the sounds you are pronouncing. It seems to me the pronunciation must work with the native language so the hearer can understand. So, for example, we wouldn't say "volksvagen" in the US. Most of the time I have heard the two terms you mention pronounced:

və-lāy-hō

tə-mē-yə

with the "ə" pronounced like the "a" in the first and last syllables of ba-na-na.

There's been a lot of debate about the correct pronunciation of Tamiya. Likely, there will be with Vallejo, as well.

Since we are talking about pronunciation how do you pronounce:

Revell

Re---vell  rhymes with bell      (my vote)

or

Rev---ell  the "L" sound,  kinda sounds like rebel.

Ditto Finnish. No accent on syllables.