From a Catalanised Manchega:

¿Cómo se llama a un cowboy mugriento?
Johnny Melavo.
¿Cómo se llama a un cowboy amnésico?
Johnny Macuerdo.
[etcétera]

I’m afraid I can’t tell you whether it was a [ʑ] or a [ʒ] on the one hand or [ʝ] on the other–I do melody, harmony, rhythm, but not articulation, and I’m an English native speaker, so I might not hear the difference anyway, even if the subject hadn’t buggered off down the beach, leaving me with the washing. But I assume that in this case we’re talking the former, Catalanised Spanish, which, like its comparatively well-documented counterpart, Hispanicised Catalan or Xava, is often used humorously.

That the pun also works in some varieties of Spanish can be seen from this commercial for a new Chilean personal grooming product:

I think Johnny Melavo Nunca and Jonny Melabo Lapolla are both Barcelona banlieue pseudonyms, so given the dread spread of the Latino yeísmo in the region, I guess they could hang either way.

[
Why are furrin coyboys always Johnny? Take Koos Konijn:

John Wayne, Johnny? Surely not. So why not Koiboi Tom, Dick, or even Fred:

]

Tags: Barcelona, bilingualism, Catalan, code-switching, cowboy, John Wayne, jokes, Jordi Ballart, phonetics, pun, sociolect, Spanish, voiced alveolo-palatal fricative, voiced palatal fricative, voiced palato-alveolar fricative, Xava
Categories: Fields, landmarks, land measures, Flocks and work animals, Languages, Les bourgeois, Music

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