squidpants

so the new Beck cd is out, called Guero. What I've heard is cool and funny stuff, much more like the old beck than the Sea Change album, which I didn't like much. However, there seems to be some confusion about the pronunciation. Some people say "gwairo" and some even say "hairo" or "hwairo." (The DJ Mike on WOXY for example is confused.) I'm no Spanish expert, but I think it should be "gairo", like a hard G and the word arrow, but all together. For example, the word "guerra" means war, and is pronunced "gaira" (with a trilled r). The word "que," meaning "what," has the same rule, it's pronounced "kay," not "kway." I think that when there's a UE after a G it makes it a hard G and then you pronounce only the E, which makes a long A sound. So "gue" is gay. haha. I think it'd only be "gwairo" if the U has an umlaut over it, because that means pronounce both vowels separately.

This site says the same thing, that g+ue is a hard G plus the long A sound that the E makes in Spanish. Here's a sound clip of it. Boo-yah!

UPDATE - so my pal Erin told me she heard the song "Que Onda Guero" from his cd, and Mr. Hansen himself says "gwairo." So I guess he just didn't want to put the umlaut on there. Oh well.