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Chipotle or chip poultry?

Jack of the Box, Jewish Buddha and Not Shoepal wonder how to pronounce chipotle. The answer, of course, is "chee-POHT-lay".

My Diccionario de aztequismos (Ediciones Oasis, México DF, 1984) says:

CHILPOCLE, CHIPOCTLE. V. Chilpotle

CHILPOTLE. Nombre común a diversas especies de chile secado a humo o a fuego lento, con lo cual toma color rojo oscuro. El chilpotle se usa para toda clase de salsas, guisos o moles colorados. En el mercado se venden diversas clases de chilpotles, a saber: chile ancho, pasilla, mulato, rayado, morita, cascabelillo, etc., con los cuales se hacen diversas salsas o moles. Etimología: chile ahumado; de chilli, chile, y poctli, humo. Aun cuando ya no se usa el procedimiento de ahumar el chile para secarlo.

(CHILPOTLE. Common name of various species of chile pepper dried with smoke or slow fire, with which they take on a dark red color. Chilpotle is used for all sorts of red salsas, gravies and moles. A number of classes of chilpotles are sold in the market: chile ancho, pasilla, mulato, rayado, morita, cascabelillo, etc., with which different salsas or moles are made. Etymology: smoked pepper; from chilli, chile, and poctli, smoke. Applies even when smoke is not used to dry the pepper.)

See Chile Today's Chile Primer for more on the peppers used to make chipotles.

I gather that the -tl- in chipotle is the unvoiced lateral affricate commonly occurring in Nahuatl; it is similar to the unvoiced ll in Welsh.

Chipotle isn't in the mainstream Spanish dictionaries I have on hand. It's a shame that these dictionaries are so poor at reflecting Nahuatl- and other indigenously-derived words, but thankfully the Diccionario de aztequismos is a delight. It's not that good a guide to current Mexican usage, however; Google shows far more occurrences of chipotle in Spanish-language web pages than the dictionary-endorsed spelling chilpotle.

Good to know. Are there Chipotle restaurants where you live? Here in Dallas there are a couple. I LOVE THEM. But it's funny how hardly anybody is able to pronounce it correctly. I'll post a link on my site for this entry, i liked it. :)

Okay, I know my Spanglish doesn't really make me an expert, but I would never pronounce the last syllable like "lay." It's "leh" like "lent," not a drawn out "a" sound. Same with a ton of other Spanish words.

So, am I completely wrong? Do "chipotle"'s indiginous roots make the pronounciation different from other Spanish words?

You're right, of course. Pronunciation guides that use English spelling for other languages ("chee-POHT-lay", "MEH-hee-koh", etc., or what some call Berlitz-speak) endourage people to use the wrong vowels and consonants.

Maybe I should have transcribed that as "chee-POHT-leh" but it still wouldn't be quite right.

chipotle is a nahuatl word, but the nahuatl -tl is used such that the syllables of the word are divided as such:

chee-PO-tlay

likewise, the word nahuatl would be
now-WAH-tul, but the tul is more of a percussive sound than a syllable.

try slapping your tongue against the edge of the hard palate while exhaling with a huh sound. that's the best approximation i can make.

Ferdinand, thanks for your comment. You're right that the approximation "chee-POHT-leh" gets the syllable breaks wrong, in part because /tl/ is a single affricate consonant. You can't break up the syllable in the middle of /tl/ any more than you could render the pronunciation of "watches" as "WAHT-shez".

However, concerning the pronunciation of the word Nahuatl, I don't think "now-WAH-tul" gets it, either, in part because the word only has two syllables and the stress is on the first: "NAH-watl".

I've looked around to try to find a good description of Nahuatl /tl/ with an explanation for laypeople and have yet to find one. I did find some interesting and apparently trustworthy background resources on Nahuatl: Ricardo Salvador's Learning Nahuatl page, The Summer Institute of Linguistics' Nahuatl Family site and their Gramática náhuatl (a full book available in PDF form but apparently covering a /tl/-less dialect). The SIL resources include a handy consonant chart. They represent the sound in HTML as /tl/ or /tl/, by the way; that's more correct than just /tl/ because /l/ is IPA for an voiceless form of /l/.

Anyway, I found nothing that explains /tl/ for the layperson. So, trying to reconstruct what I was taught many years ago: the technical description of Nahuatl /tl/ is a "voiceless lateral affricate". Voiceless means it lacks buzzing from the vocal chords (like voiceless /s/ or /t/, as opposed to voiced /z/ or /d/). Lateral means air passes over the side of the tongue (like /l/ or variations thereof). Affricate means it consists of a stop followed by a release of air to make a fricative in the same place. English ch is the common example of a fricative, consisting of the stop /t/ followed by the fricative sh (damn but I wish HTML had escape codes for the International Phonetic Alphabet!).

As to how to pronounce /tl/, try this exercise. Start with the word "middle" then devoice the "-ddle" and shorten it so it is a final complex consonant rather than a second syllable: /mitl/. Your tongue should stop the air to make the /t/ then one or both sides of your tongue should lower slightly to let through a burst of air and make the voiceless /l/.

Does that help? If not, can one of the real linguists who occasionally stop by this blog explain it more clearly?

If you make an account and log in to the very cool Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, you can download mp3s and 12 pdf pages of transcription of a story told in Nahua.

Neato :)

Dear Prentiss and Kika:

I agree with you both. I have found most irksome the pronunciation given Chipotle in a current television commercial for Subway Sandwich Stores. The emphasis on the final syllable with the English diphthong "lay" is extremely uncomfortable to my ear. WHY IS IT THAT WE MUST ENDLESSLY FLIT FROM PEPPER TO YUPPY PEPPER, THROUGH WILLIAMS SONOMA FIELDS OF POOR TASTE AND ABOMINABLE PRONUNCIATION? I suppose the answer is: "So retailers can make money." I should be quiet about it AND HUMBLY BITE DOWN UPON THE NEXT "CHEESE-AND-STEAK QUESADILLA" SET BEFORE ME!

American: "Land of the Free and Home of the Velveeta!"

Sincerely yours,
CALEB BOONE.

Amen to that, Caleb! The worst offender of all in my book is Taco Bell's so-called "gordita", which has nothing whatsoever to do with a real gordita. They just took a word from Mexican cuisine that sounded good and used it to market another quasi-random permutation of the same 10 Taco Bell ingredients. Next year they'll probably find a way to package a blob of Velveeta on a stick and market it under the name "guisado" or "carnitas" or something equally illogical.

Second runner-up in the butchery of culinary Spanish might be chicken and vegetarian "fajitas". Sorry, Charlie, but a fajita is a cut of meat, not a manner of serving food so it sizzles and smokes on a metal plate! If chickens have fajitas they would be tiny scraps of flesh somewhere around the rib cage, and I assure you that onions, tomatoes and peppers do not have fajitas at all.

I stumbled onto your web-site for the pronunciation of "chipotle" as the currently accepted "chi-pot-lay" sounds so artificial given that it is used in the USA-Mexican menus. Thank you for providing a place to disagree about pronunciation as well as mis-use of terms such as "fajitas" and "gorditas.

I also came across your web-site seeking the pronunciation of "chipotle". Now your going to laugh at this, I did under my breath. After seeing a package of "Smoked Chipotle Rice" my friend pronounced it "chee-pohl-tay". She insisted that "dispite the way its spelled, the "L" is pronounced before the "T", it's always been said that-a-way",etc. I thank you for a great web-site that will come in handy in the future. Also for the "I told you so" moment.

Thank you again,
Farm R Spanglish
Ark-River Valley, CO

Could someone please upload a audio file to the "correct" pronuncication?

Merriam-Webster to the rescue! Their online dictionary entry for chipotle includes a WAV file of its pronunciation. (Note that this is an English pronunciation, not a Spanish one.)

chee-POHT-lay is definitely the most logical pronunciation for American English speakers. However, I think the correct spanish pronuncation would be chee-PO-tlay as mentioned by Ferdinand. I think other Spanish words also keep the tl together. Other words such as atlantico and atletico follow the same rule.

Oh, for god's sake, here you are arguing about the "tl," when it's "chilpotle," not "chipotle." Don't be confused just because a lot of people can't spell. If you don't believe me, spend some time in Central Mexico, where the word originated. I cring every time I hear chipotle - it may be easier in English, and even Spanish, but it just ain't right.

Actually, none of this is correct as far as the English pronunciation goes. It is chip-o-tle, with the le pronounced the same as it is in the word "little". So stop saying "lay" and pronounce it correctly or I'll have to rap your knuckles with my ruler.

You chile-eatin' hombres y hermanas are all right!
Of course, I got here bc I wanted to not be an idiot when I asked for my new favorite food additive in public places. I even request Chipotle salsa to put on my knish, another word I am unsure of - is it like 'knife,' and every other 'kn' word in my dictionary, where 'k' is silent, or like people here in this highly academic area say it, 'Kah-nish?'
Back to the Chip O'Tell word, is the 'ch' like the 'ch' in 'muchacho?'
So, to add this all up, I could look into dark south-of-the-border eyes and ask for "chee-poh'-tleh" with a little ripple of the tongue, without embarrasment?

Muchos Gracias - Maria