Pronunciation of 'buffet'
How is the word 'buffet' usually pronounced in Latin American countries? Specifically, is the 't' pronounced? The Translator pronounces the 't' but, since the word is derived fron the French, I wonder if this is really correct. In English we do not pronounce the 't', of course.
6 Answers
Great question.
In Guatemala they say "Boo-fet" and you can hear the pronunciation here.
Just as an interesting side note: A law firm is called "un bufete de abogados."
Hi Kirk1. Very interesting topic!
Yes, what you’re hearing is correct.
In English, the way that something is spelled (orthography) and the way that it is pronounced (phonology) are obviously not a close match. There are rules and patterns, of course. But there are also very many exceptions and inconsistencies. For this reason, when we import a foreign word into English, we usually make an effort to maintain the original pronunciation—más o menos—as it is pronounced by speakers of the original language. Hey, why not, right? We have virtually no consistency between spelling and pronunciation in English, so why bother to try to change the foreign patterns?
Nothing could be further from the case in Spanish. Why? Because Spanish is a language with a strict, virtually one-to-one correspondence between orthography and phonology. To put it another way: In Spanish, the way a word sounds is the way that it is spelled. And, vice versa, the way that a word is spelled is the way that it sounds. Spanish speakers (from any Spanish-speaking country) are, in an automatic-pilot way, very strict on this because, linguistically, that is just how Spanish operates.
For this reason, there is no effort made among Spanish speakers to maintain the pronunciation of a word that has been imported from a foreign language in the way that it is pronounced by the speakers of that host language. Sometimes—in fact, usually—this strict one-to-one correspondence of spelling/pronunciation in Spanish forces spelling (orthographic) changes as words are imported. Thus the English word football must be re-spelled, so to speak, as fútbol. Baseball gets converted to béisbol. (If these words retained their English spelling, their utterances by Spanish speakers wouldn’t even be close in sound. English speakers, for instance, pronounce the letter a six different ways; for any Spanish speaker, though, it is always and only ah. Bah-say-bahl just doesn’t cut it.)
When I lived in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico (which is not too far south of Tucson, Arizona), there was this store, Office Depot. (It won’t and can’t be re-spelled, because it’s a business name, the ownership of which lies elsewhere.) As English speakers, we know that the word depot comes from the French, so we don’t say the t. (Aren’t we tres chic?) In Spanish? No way. The letter t is not silent, so it’s pronounced, punto. Then there was this other store, Wal-Mart. I heard it referred to a bazillion times. And never once did they say the second syllable as mart. It was always pronounced mar. You never heard the final t. Why? Because, in Spanish, consonantal clusters are not word-final. It is as though they can’t say the t in –rt. Or they refuse to. Spanish is just that way. English, of course, is not that way, so its speakers do different things, so to speak.
And the pizza place? Peet-za? No way. Pee-sa. Why? Because the people don’t gravitate to trying to make a word sound like the original Italian. They naturally gravitate to strict Spanish pronunciation, which, among other rules, demands that there is no /t/ sound with an occurrence of the letter z; and that alveolar fricatives are only voiceless, never voiced, so that any written occurrence of the letter z (with few exceptions) will always sound only like /s/.
So, when you hear Spanish speakers pronounce the word buffet as boo-fate or boo-fette, yes, that is correct. The letter t occurs, so it must be said, regardless of the pattern in the host language. (The letter e in Spanish can sound like an English long a [but with no “stretching out,” or diphthongization], which is a mid-front-unrounded tense vowel; or it can sound like eh, which is a mid-front-unrounded lax vowel. But with this particular word, you’re more likely to hear boo-fate than boo-fette.)
(Of course, in French, boo-fay is correct. And you may hear it pronounced this way by English speakers. Although, more likely, English speakers will say buh-fay, because English, unlike French or Spanish, has frequent vowel reduction to the schwa sound, but that is another topic!)
Although it is clear from context that Kirk is talking about a food service (buh-fay), it can also be pronounced buf-fet, in which case it means a series of shocks. Just an example of the importance of context, and also the non- phoenetic nature of English pronunciation.
I've noticed that, at least in Spain, French words with the silent "t" get the "t" pronounced in Spanish.
Buffet = Boo-FETT Ballet = Bah-LETT
I was in a conversation just last night where people were discussing Las Vegas and the various shows and buffets there, and everyone pronounced the T, including 1 each person from Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, plus some fairly advanced gringos, so I think that at least in the Americas, it´s just as Mariana says, boo-fet.
Really: smörgåsbord, but the British find this too difficult so they have gone for the poor French imitation of a proper popper smörgåsbord.
They are the losers! 
