Hmmm...makes me think of the difference in pronunciation between Norwegian and Danish. The guttural G...I am imagining something close to a glottal stop...? Do you have an example?

Where is there a "kh" in Mexico? Maybe I'm missing it...there is a difference between a Mexican accent and a Spanish accent, and I learned "Spain" Spanish rather than "Mexico" Spanish when I was younger, so my pronunciation is a little different than a lot of guys in the area who speak Spanish as a first language. Come to think of it, I'm not sure OTOH if Mexicans add a "kh" as in "Mehikho" or not...the sound I make at the "c" isn't anything like "loch" or the description of the "kh" sound...it's like the "kh", but much softer.

?

-Sean

Quote Originally Posted by Mike_Oettle View Post
The various assertions on how to pronounce Chattan intrigued me because, since I speak Afrikaans and German (and a bit of Dutch) the guttural sound found in loch is very familiar to me.
There is a general English-speaking tendency to lose that sound wherever possible (it was part of Anglo-Saxon).
It is a dead give-away when an English-speaker tries to speak Afrikaans and gets the g-sound wrong (both g and ch have guttural pronunciations in Dutch and Afrikaans).
And in the wider world we come across people who rave over the “locks” of Scotland and, especially in the US, those who anglicise Hispanic names like Juan (Wan), Julio (Hoolio) and Mexico (Meksiko) where there properly are kh-sounds.
The public school-educated sons of Scottish lords and lairds also fall into this trap, so I am not surprised to learn that at least one claimant to the chiefship of Clan Chattan talks of Clan Hatton.
But I am happy to have my suspicions confirmed and to continue speaking of Clan Khattan.
Regards,
Mike