Pronunciation of Quetzalcoatl

[sacha]

I hope that the people talking about Quetzalcoatl here know how to pronounce it. It is pronounced keh-tsal-KO-at with a final voiceless l -- the -atl ending is a single syllable (the -tl is a fusion of t and voiceless l into a single sound). IF one cannot pronounce it that way, with the voiceless l, it is preferable to anglicize it by dropping the voiceless l altogether (as many dialects of Nahuatl do) than to anglicize it by pronouncing the l voiced as a separate syllable, eg., "ket-sal-ko-wattle" (or worse, "kwet-sal-ko-wattle") as I have often heard it mispronounced.

[ May 03, 2006, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: sacha ]