Thought I'd mention this and explain the Portuguese pronunciation of José Fonte for anyone that's interested. Plenty of people call him Ho-SE. Joo-ZE is the correct pronunciation. Ho-SE is infact the Spanish pronunciation for José. The Portuguese pronounce it zho-ZE/Joo-ZE. http://www.forvo.com/search/jose/pt/ Now let's move onto the surname. The Portuguese go with Font-EH/Font-EHR. http://www.forvo.com/search/fonte/gl/ http://www.forvo.com/search/fonte/pt/ http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/fountain The French would pronounce it Font as would we. (http://www.forvo.com/search/fonte/fr/). So we could either choose to pronounce Fonte like José would himself as Font-EH/Font-EHR or go with Font which would be an English pronunciation . Personally I go with Jo-ZE Font-EH and have always called him that since he joined us because I feel he'd prefer us to say his name how he'd say it himself. Doesn't mean someone saying Font is wrong of course. But Ho-SE is obviously incorrect in Portuguese and English. It's funny as I found an old thread which basically had many saying only Font was correct and Font-EH/Font-AY was wrong. Others were saying they were going to keep calling him Font-EH/Fonte-AY as they preferred it. So thought I'd make this.
I'm still in the "I'm pronouncing it font-ay because I'm used to it" group. Also, I believe Jose has said himself he doesn't care either way.
The 'I'm pronouncing it font-ay because I'm used to it' group can also say 'because it's the right pronunciation in Portuguese'. Font-EH/Font-EHR/Font-AY all sound extremely similar
They probably use an ee sound at the end of Fonte but very softly, it cannot be Fontay in Portuguese unless it had the accent acute like this Fonté. Hoje for example, which means today in english, is pronounced something like oige, with barely any ee sound to it. If a word that finishes with vowel is followed immediately by a word that starts with a vowel the two vowels get merged together, which could also alter the pronunciation of Fonte. If you think that's hard, then Portuguese plurals will do your head in! Plurais, que sacco!
I've noticed that the stadium announcer now says Font, so I assumed they must have checked that with the player first. Shame, as "Jose Font baby" doesn't quite work.
His name could be pronounced Emmanuel Porcupine, for all I know. Just so long as we can still sing "Jo-zay font-ay, Baby, Jo-zay font-ay, O-ooo-oh" I'll be happy.
Not a problem with our chant...lots of people get called different names with affection. For instance, at work I am Frangelina, Richard Lambert is Rickie or Lambo. I am fairly certain that Jose is not annoyed by people singing his name incorrectly.
The thing is though nobody pronounces foreign names/words exactly as the natives say them when they are speaking in a different language to them. Or you end up sounding like a bellend. Or a bit like Joey Barton in a French press conference. Case in point, the French don't pronounce "sandwich" the same way we do, and why should they? "Zho-zay Font" is close enough for me.
