how do you pronounce merengue?

[1% Critical Hit]

/meˈɾenɡe/, [meˈɾẽŋɡe] that's an IPA for Spanish pronunciation, I know her name in Spanish is Natura, but I like to play in English because I remember those names better.

 

[Cosmic-chan]

I called her mergy- whoops

 

[fuzzdebell]

This is a weird one. I think either pronunciation is reasonable:

I say Me-rang because her name is an
obvious reference to meringue.
However, the way it is spelled would actually be pronounced Mer-en-gay like the dance.

To me either is valid, even though I wonder if whoever named her just misspelled “meringue”. Definitely wouldn’t be surprised xD

I do agree with you because the spelling is different. But I still call her Mer-rang

 

[Vextro]

I pronounce it Mur-eng

 

[starlightsong]

Yep, found that out in New Leaf when using the megaphone to call her, it wouldn't recognise any other pronunciation except "pate," like "Kate."

....I'm still gonna call her Pah-tay, like duck paté.

I don’t think the megaphone is very accurate lmao, you have to call Phoebe “fobe” to get it to call her! I don’t see why Pate’s name would be anything other than a pun on duck paté even if the spelling is technically wrong, tbh.

...And on the topic of this thread, I’d like to say the same thing about Merengue! Given that she’s a dessert-based villager, I just can’t see the translation team as having intended her name to be pronounced like the dance rather than the dessert even if they got the spelling wrong. I mean, they were referring to flowers that are very obviously lilies of the valley (and are correctly named as such in Japanese) as “jacob’s ladders” from 2003 up until 2015, so I can easily believe they wanted her to be Meringue and made a simple mistake. But if people want to pronounce her name the same way as the dance then hey, go for it! It’s not like Merengue herself can tell you you’re wrong and neither can I.

 

[Octolino]

I speak spanish and I never EVER questioned how to pronounce her name until today. Now i'm trying to figure out the way you guys pronounce it and it sounds sooo weird!
mereeng WHAT

if you press the speaker button you can hear how it is in spanish.

Don't feel bad, I say "Merengue" just like it is in spanish. So, 3 syllabes for me. I was so confused when I first heard a Youtuber saying "Merang".

 

[Sheba]

So I'm not a native English speaker, never heard of that food and also don't speak French or Spanish.
...So I always said "Meh-ren-goo-eh" and you can't stop me (it's how you would pronounce it in German if you just read the word).

 

[Xeleron]

I don't know where the whole Spanish discussion came about bout as a simultaneous bilingual I'll add my 2 cents, if you don't care, then disregard this post.

Most of the time I see Meregue's name I'll pronounce it the same way the pastry is pronounced (the French way or as close to it as I possibly can), since I mostly see her name on this English predominant forum I have no reason to think about her name in the way it's supposed to be pronounced in Spanish...

Now, I'm not sure where the -gay comes from... I've seen people reference the dance and it might be because English speakers are anglicizing the word to fit their own set of phonemes. (In Spanish you don't pronounce the dance with the ending -gay either)

Interestingly enough, after a quick search (taken from wikipedia, so take this info with a grain of salt)
"It has been claimed that meringue was invented in the Swiss village of Meiringen and improved by an Italian chef named Gasparini between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century."

Post automatically merged: Jun 2, 2020

I picked other but I'll avoid embarrassment by not saying how I pronounced it just now.

You've peeked my curiosity lol (Still you don't have to say it if you don't want to)

 

[tybalt_cake]

mer-en-geh


it's kinda how its said in spanish

 

[Stella-Io]

Mer-rang like the pie topping. Ngl, when I first saw it years ago, I pronounced it too literal as Mer-en-gue cause I didn't know how meringue was spelt back then.

Okay we all know she's based off of the dessert, but which meringue? What Meringue pie is pink? Shouldn't she be yellow since lemon meringue is most common (atleast here it is).

 

[Adelaide]

Like the food, so mer-rang.

 

[BigBadButterfree]

I don’t think the megaphone is very accurate lmao, you have to call Phoebe “fobe” to get it to call her! I don’t see why Pate’s name would be anything other than a pun on duck paté even if the spelling is technically wrong, tbh.

...And on the topic of this thread, I’d like to say the same thing about Merengue! Given that she’s a dessert-based villager, I just can’t see the translation team as having intended her name to be pronounced like the dance rather than the dessert even if they got the spelling wrong. I mean, they were referring to flowers that are very obviously lilies of the valley (and are correctly named as such in Japanese) as “jacob’s ladders” from 2003 up until 2015, so I can easily believe they wanted her to be Meringue and made a simple mistake. But if people want to pronounce her name the same way as the dance then hey, go for it! It’s not like Merengue herself can tell you you’re wrong and neither can I.

OMG in the GC game my brother and I had Pate and we always jokingly called her Paté cuz we were kids and it sounded funny. That's amazing that this many years later I find out that someone thought that was a valid pronunciation and you even have reasoning for it! Thank you for that!

 

[John Wick]

Mare-rang. Like the pavlova!

 

[PugLovex]

i’ve always said “mer-ang” since she’s based off of the pastry!

 

[June]

part of me thinks it should be mer-rang like for pastries (the reference is pretty obvious), but i keep saying her name in three syllables anyway 6_6

 

[Red Cat]

I pronounce it "Mare-en-gay". The first part of her name is similar to "merry", then there's the "n", then there's the "gue" which I use a Spanish pronunciation for. That probably makes no sense, but I like how it sounds.

 

[SmoochsPLH]

Muh-rang

Is that not right? xD

 

[starlightsong]

OMG in the GC game my brother and I had Pate and we always jokingly called her Paté cuz we were kids and it sounded funny. That's amazing that this many years later I find out that someone thought that was a valid pronunciation and you even have reasoning for it! Thank you for that!

Yeah, I can’t say for sure whether Pate’s name is meant to be like payte or pa-tay because it’s not like we get to hear her say it, but duck paté is in fact a food that’s pronounced the same way you’re thinking of! It seems a bit dark that there’d be a duck in Animal Crossing with that name, but... no more dark than there being a bull named T-Bone, a pig named Chops, or Zucker being designed to look like takoyaki lol! Definitely a valid way to pronounce it in my book.

 

[bricoleling]

I was a latin ballroom dancer, I can dance a merengue.
But she looks like pavlova so she's 'mer-ang' to me with french pronunciation. Its seems silly to call her the name of the dance, even if it's spelled that way, since she is not dance themed at all.

 

[Cheallaigh]

Mer-rang like the pie topping. Ngl, when I first saw it years ago, I pronounced it too literal as Mer-en-gue cause I didn't know how meringue was spelt back then.

Okay we all know she's based off of the dessert, but which meringue? What Meringue pie is pink? Shouldn't she be yellow since lemon meringue is most common (atleast here it is).

hmm how about strawberry lemon? great now i want some...
here, if we didn't know the franco way of saying it as a dessert, it would most likely have been mer ren gee (gue ends up being gee here in quebeqios).

btw french, spanish, italian, and portuguese are all romantic languages based off of latin originally in part... so having similar spellings for words is common. if you know one, it aids in knowing the others.