Posted on 01/29/2023 11:13:42 AM PST by lefty-lie-spy
I am a fan of classic radio shows and I notice that until at least the late 1930s, what we know as the city of Los Angeles, California, was always referred to phonetically as, “Los Angle-Es”.
Do any of our old timers or young timers with more knowledge than myself here know, or remember when, the pronunciation change was made, and by who, and why?
You can hear this formerly de facto pronunciation in old radio shows from the 1930s such as this example - https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/case-closed-old-time-radio/id219708992?l=en&i
I appreciate you all accepting my Vanity post.
“The residents can pronounce it however they want. I will match their Los Angeles with our Worcester“
You mean “War-Chester”? 😋
Leicester wants a piece of this conversation.
In the movie 1941 the ballroom dance announcer say it, Los Angle malese, California.
“I remember when people used to correct someone for saying LA instead of Los Angeles.”
Where? In Tulare County there wasn’t a strong love with L.A. as they used to come into the hills and their hunters would shoot about anything in sight to include a lot of dairy cows. And their lack of caring was inviting thousands of illegals into the valley to work for the UFW and create a lot of problems for the agricultural community. They also sucked a lot of water out of the valley and north that could have been used for agriculture and caused a lot of drought problems in the farm and ranching community. It now has effected Lake Mead, Glenn Canyon Lake Powell, and is still cutting off water from the valley so they can water their plants. Like I said, no love lost there. (And we called them other things, also that can’t be printed here)
wy69
I’m older’n dirt and I’ve been hearing the occasional oddball pronounce it that way my entire life. It’s often pronounced that way in Hollyweird films from the 1930s & 40s.
Comes to it, it was named by Spanish speakers, and they pronounce a ‘G’ like an ‘H,’ so the correct non-gringo pronunciation would be “lōs (not “las”) an-HELL-es.”
Lost Angeles.
In LA and San Diego in the 1960s and 70s, it seemed to fade out as the years passed and immigration increased.
Putting Texans in charge of deciding the proper pronunciation of all words in America and Britain would end a lot of this bickering.
I haven’t heard that pronunciation since Arlo Guthry
Oh I can tell you that! Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
NOT ENOUGH RED IN LOS ANGELESS!!! You puta sock in it
I have a friend who says “supposebly” rather than supposedly. Lol I just keep quiet. Drives me crazy but not worth embarrassing her lol.
There was once heated debate over how to pronounce “Los Angeles.” The Spanish pronunciation of the name has long been “Loce AHN-heh-less.” Yet, non-Spanish speaking Angelenos seemed to prefer the harder-sounding anglicized version “Loss ANN-ja-less.” The anglicized version was adopted, in 1934, by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Los Angeles Times vigorously defended the Spanish pronunciation and printed directly below its editorial page masthead, “LOS ANGELES (Loce Ahng-hayl-ais).” When the U.S. Board on Geographic Names recognized the anglicized version, the Times was outraged, declaring that the pronunciation made the city “sound like some brand of fruit preserve.” The newspaper further suggested that Easterners plotted to deprive the West Coast of its softer-sounding Spanish names, proposing that California would next have to tolerate such place names as “Sandy Ego,” “San Joce,” and (for San Joaquin) “San Jokkin” (Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1934). In all fairness, however, the Times did not express the same distain for the prevalent pronunciation of San Pedro as “San PEE-dro,” rather than the Spanish “San PEY-dro.”
In 1952, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron assembled a panel to come up with the city’s own official pronunciation of its name. The panel included language professors, radio announcers and journalists. They agreed to the anglicized version “Loss ANN-ju-less.” Even so, some early 1950s Los Angeles travel films still used alternative pronunciations, such as “Loss ANN-geh-less” (with a hard “G”).
Source: http://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge13c.php
I’m old and grew up there. Yes, Mayor Sam Yorty pronounced it AngeleEEs. He was born in the midwest (Iowa IIRC) but not sure how old he was when he moved to LA. He and LAPD Chief Parker cleaned up the corruption of the Mayor Poulson era. I mark the beginning of LA’s decline with Yorty’s loss of the mayoralty to Tom Bradley.
Los Angeles must rhyme with “keys” and “please” according to Arlo.
Coming into Los Angeles
Bringing in a couple of keys
Don’t touch my bags if you please
Mister customs man, yeah.
It comes from the dust bowl days, mass migration from Oklahoma, parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Texas. It was a new pronunciation that avoided the Spanish version. Not so much now, but when I was in California in the 70s, if you heard that pronunciation you could bet your bottom peso that the family lineage was from that era. Usually used by older persons who grew up in such a family or the elderly themselves who migrated from the midwest/eastern plains states.
“In LA and San Diego in the 1960s and 70s, it seemed to fade out as the years passed and immigration increased.”
It faded out because as the media got more liberal and supportive of the democrats, they were a key tool in trying to hide what actually was increasing along with their voting numbers, legal or not. And a lot of that is based upon the definition of immigration, legal or not.
Between 1/3 and 1/2 of all farmworkers in America reside in California, or roughly 500,000 - 800,000 farmworkers. Approximately 75% of California’s farmworkers are undocumented; 83% in Santa Cruz County. And that’s at the other end of the state.
Another example of the illegals getting ignored is East L.A. With 118,964 people, East Los Angeles is the 52nd most populated city in the state of California out of 1,571 cities. In L.A. County, alone, there are 951K undocumented with the Latin side of it at 721K. The most illegals coming in are from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. And as jobs disappear in the basin due to their lack of education and paperwork, they will migrate north into the valley for farm work. They have for eighty years and more. It hasn’t gone away, it just got organized.
wy69
Robert Mitchum uses that pronunciation in the opening scene of Tombstone.
Arlo Guthrie
I meant running into proud Los Angelenos who would ask people to use the full name instead of LA faded out.
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