Arizona news anchor Vanessa Ruiz is bilingual and pronounces Spanish words and names correctly. There has been the expected blowback on the Interweb. For example:
“Please speak with out your accent! I hope I didn’t offend, but I love the first amendment without second hand accent.”
We totally support Ruiz’s attempt to educate Americans, but hope someone will establish a GoFundMe to send her to America latina (Latin America) so she can teach them to correctly pronounce English words, such as
- United States (not Estados Unidos)
- Baseball (not béisbol)
- Americans (not Norteamericanos)
- President Barack Obama (not Presidente Barack Obama)
- New York (not Nueva York)
And the list goes on . . .
Having studied issues like this in graduate school, I can say this is a bit more complicated than you’re making it out to be. It’s not easy to say what the “original” or “correct” pronunciation of a word is, or when a loan word from one language is so thoroughly integrated into another that it ceases to be perceived of as foreign or as belonging to the first language. It would be silly of me to insist on referring to Rio de Janeiro as “Hio”, even though that is the correct Portuguese pronunciation. I feel that this anchorwoman is not necessarily wrong to use Spanish pronunciation of place names as long as she is not confusing her audience.