"Ciujano" instead of "Ciudadano"?
I have been stumped by a word that I have been hearing on the radio for a while and based upon the context I am quite sure it means "citizen". The pronunciation sounds like "ciujano" and in fact for a while I was confused as I thought they were saying "cirujano", yet the dictionary lists citizen and "ciudadano" which is definitely not the pronunciation I am hearing. Is this a local variant (I am listening to a station in Arizona so most likely it would be a Mexican variant) or I am I perhaps mispelling the word? Any help would be appreciated as it is a word used quite a bit and I don't want to assume it means something and then use it incorrectly.
4 Answers
"Ciujano" instead of "ciudadano"???? I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that a Spanish native speaker (who doesn't live in the US and has a strong influence from Am. Eng.) can mix both words. To a native's ear, they are totally different.
However, the two D in "ciudadano" are so soft, that it is not surprising that some people hear "ciuaano", which, with a slight aspiration of the J, could sound almost like a J. I guess that pronounced fast, carelessly and with an aspiration, they do not sound that different, but they are like day and night if you say them correctly. I think that only a person who has not gone through the basic education system in Spanish could make such a mistake. I would be interested to hear that first hand.
Well, it does seem to be a common misspelling or typo for cirujano. Look at several surgeons or plastic surgeons that misspelled it online. (There are several pages of these misspellings).
I did not see any cases where it was a misspelling of ciudadano, however.
Why don't you call the radio station and ask them? That'd be the quickest and easiest way to find out for sure.
I am going to listen more closely next time I hear it and test Lazarus' theory. I am almost positive it does mean "citizen" as it is used all the time when having discussions about immigration and too frequently for surgeon to make sense.
