I always employ the former when pronouncing ‘Valencia Street,’ and as far as I can recall most other people do as well. So hopefully you can understand how taken aback I was upon hearing the auto bus stop announcement aboard Muni instead use the latter. Now I’m all out of sorts over the matter.
If you think I’m foolish for even thinking about trusting Muni’s onboard speaker system, I point towards exhibit A: its flawless rendition of Gough. Surely it can’t be right in this case though?
Muni also says “Dee Veez adero,” and abbreviates it as “Diviz,” so who knows
I’m with you.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/scavenger/detail?entry_id=53651
Recordings were done by a lady in Texas. Guess no one in SF was available?
Exactly — they should have gotten Hal Robins.
+1
Jon Miller, he could do it in perfect English and Spanish.
How great would that be to have Jon Miller calling out the stops!
Yeah, i would love it if he announced bus stops. Then, and maybe then, they would pronounce Arguello St. & Guerrero st. correctly. Good lord it’s so dumb, but I hate hearing it mispronounced.
Genius idea!
Mal Sharpe
Only for the Market Street stops. Would be genius, though, if those Clipper card readers were interactive with the MUNI PA.
That’s how old school mission residents pronounce it.
My wife’s grandfather (pushing 100) is from the old school Scandinavian community in the mission, and he has what they call “the mission accent”. It’s a touch like the brooklyn accent, and yeah, they say “Valencha”.
I could have sworn this was discussed on MM already- the “Mission accent”. For some reason I remember it in context of Shotwells bar.
http://www.missionmission.org/2010/03/11/save-the-dovre-club/#comment-16965
Three cheers for Tad’s institutional memory, everyone! I spent 15 minutes trying to find that comment and couldn’t.
Yeah to answer your question, he’s simply not interested in being recorded talking about anything. We wanted to go talk to him about a bunch of stuff and maybe use it as the basis of a novel. He has zero interest and vetoes it every time. He’s an awesome dude just very stubborn!
Arrgwello
YES!! That’s what I’m talking about!!
Is there supposed to be a picture in this post, or just a big empty space?
Something that Andrew, and only Andrew does when he posts prevents his photos from showing up in some (not all) browsers.
Yeah, I see it now. The image doesn’t appear in Firefox, and just like before it has something to do with the completely unnecessary CSS on the img tag:
style=”display:block;margin-right:auto;margin-left:auto;”
I think it’s cause he’s posting from a crummy cell phone sometimes. I’ll check it out.
Yup, these are all mobile posts. Android’s blowing it. My bad fellas.
If the Android WordPress client sucks as much as the iPhone client, I feel ya.
Geary or Gary?
Market or Meerkat?
Funny shit dude.
Chă-vesh or ChA-rmy?
Just Army.
There is only one way to pronounce it, en castellano: “ba-len-thia”
Any other way = transplant or tourist
In castellano, you actually pronounce the V.
To me, that is how it would sound with a mouth-full of burrito. And I am neither.
oops, that was supposed to be a reply to tc.
Anyone who can’t/refuses to correctly pronounce Valencia, Vallejo, Alameda, San José, Cabrillo, Marín, San Rafael, Manteca, Los Baños, Madera, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Tiburón, etc., is either a Hee-Haw or willfully ignorant.
Is it “SANTA crooz” or “santa CROOZ”?
The latter.
Los Baños actually removed the eñe from their official spelling , so it’s just Los Banos now. I wonder if they have a Valencha street too.
Great, now they live in a town with a meaningless name in multiple languages.
val ehn ci a.
wtf is castellano go back to spain with that shit. this is mexifornia holmes
The voice on some, but not all, busses also pronounces Noe as “No”
It’s Valensia bitch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HrUXZa2Xh0
in my Mission no one ever did call anyone bitch. there’s other places you can go if you have homo-masochistic ambitions.
Valencha
Get tourists to pronounce “Gough” if they’ve never been here before. At least ten minutes of fun right there.
GOUGE
this was me 10 years ago
I’m kinda digging “The Goog” for gough.
I don’t get this. Gough rhymes with Cough.
Unless you’ve heard of Vincent Van Gogh. Not that manybody pronounce that right.
But… but… that’s TOTALLY different! (And it’s like that guy from the opera.)
but the confusion is relative to through, trough, though, etc. So, one couldn’t assume that this is an easy one at first. I had a friend in town visiting who thought it was GOO. hah.
I’m ok with EE-dhər (EYE-dhər?)
There are more people in the Mission who speak Spanish or know people who speak Spanish now than there were before. The old way of pronouncing it is from back in the day when folks were ignorant about Spanish pronunciation. Although I won’t claim that this pattern holds across all Spanish place names in California. Vallejo still has a hard L for many, Los Baños is pronounced with a regular N, Los Angeles is pronounced with a soft G instead of an H…
We don’t speak Spanish. We speak San Franciscish.
Even better is that people use a hard “L” but a soft “J”. It’s funny to have a Spanish pronunciation only at the end of the word.
I grew up in the late 60′s-70′s and took the 26 Valencha to school every day. I can always tell a non-local by the way they pronounce the name of that street.
I smell gringos.
I bet you locals never go to El Valenchano for dinner or salsa.
I’m sure you’ve been to El Valenciano once or twice though.
Valencycla
When I was growing up, it was always Valencha.
Valencia is now Hipster Highway.
Slightly off topic, but I’ve been living on Dore Street for over a year now, and no one can give me a consensus pronunciation. I’ve been saying “Dor-ee” like the rest of the homos and leather enthusiasts, but “Door” seems just as prevalent, especially among older residents. I had a cab driver haughtily tell me once that people from the City say “Door.” Any help?
“Dor-ay”, as if there was an accent acute (diacritic) over the e.
in spain they pronounce is bah-len-thee-ya. but this ain’t spain. we don’t say sahn-fron-see-sko, which wouldn’t sound right in regular conversation in any language, anyway.
so, the SF native in me says the ‘right way’ is valensha (because it HAS in fact been pronounced that way for a long time, and by angloes and latins and everyone else)
and yet there is a certain sensuality to the sibilant-S pronuniation…and sort of a hipness factor…so you can’t say it’s wrong to say it that way.
so i say it both ways, depending on what i want to say about *myself* when it comes down to it.
most often i try to just honor as many of us as i can by saying valenchia.
it’s tough to be an american. (as if)
Ha! Ignunce is ‘Murica’s newest merit badge.
Valencha and don’t let anyone tell you different.
The waiter’s ears must bleed when you order cabernet sauvignon; provided you visit restaurants without a drive-thru.
My grandmother would rise from the dead and smack me if I pronounced Valencia like that creepy robot lady.
“Please hold on…”
I grew up here pronouncing it “Valencha,” but started saying “Valenseeia” just so the latest generation of transplants could understand me.
Another old-school San Francisco pronunciation is Ju-niper Serra Blvd.
Wow I haven’t checked out MissionMission in a long, long time and I think this conversation was going on when I left. Now I show up and here it is–again! The Muni voice lady often has it wrong, but she is right this time. I use Valencha with family or locals but use Valensscia with hipsters or other new arrivals. It’s not a gringo thing! It’s an Italian thing. Valencia Street was an Italian hub before they migrated to “South City,” It was loaded with Italian stores and businesses. Italians pronounce the “c” as “ch” like “Ciao” or “Cucina.” That’s how it came about. To me it just distinguishes whether some is local or not, but there’s nothing wrong with either.
Yes, the thread that refuses to die.
Well, fair point but, to make things perfectly clear, it should be pointed out that Valencia Street was named after a Spanish rancher (or his family), so what you call “an Italian thing” is really an Italian mispronunciation of a Spanish word. I couldn’t find it in an Italian dictionary, and if you try having the Google language lady say it for you, she will happily use the “see-a” sound for both the Spanish and Italian pronunciations (although the Spanish one gets a little “b”-sound on the “V”.)
So, for those of us without several generations of relatives in The Mission (and, frankly, I can’t see any special cachet — don’t pronounce the “t” — in having them) it is “a Spanish thing”. Or an education thing, if you will.
Val-en-see=yah later.
The commenter who refuses to die.
Back at you Crank.
The Muni voice also mispronounces Pacheco as Pa-CHEE-ko instead of Pa-CHAY-ko. The pronunciation “Valencha” makes me shudder.
Any idea on the pronunciation of Junipero Serra Blvd?
If you really want to rock it proper, say:
u-NIP-ero Sarah.
Don’t call me Sarah.