In a post of mine of a few months ago, dealing with the Spanish names for the inhabitants of cities, I noted the following.
An inhabitant of Havana (La Habana) is habanero, which is also the name of a variety of chili pepper (the strange American habit of calling it “habañero” — tilde overkill! – notwithstanding).
A few days ago I came across another example of this overkill. At the New Year’s Eve concert of the New York Philharmonic — which was televised on PBS — Susan Graham sang, among other numbers, the Havanaise or Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. But both the legend onscreen andthe announcer’s voice had it as “Habañera”.
I’ll be looking for more examples.
January 20, 2009 at 12:32 pm |
It’s not just overkill, it’s illiterate, probably due to association with the word “cabaña.” But the place in Spanish is La Habana, no tilde, so there’s no call for it in a word derived from it.