Marguerite Ellery's column on the original pronunciation of “fajita” drew the largest reader response in this newspaper's history, surpassing the 2019 letters regarding the library's new hours. A selection follows, edited for length and, where the writers would permit it, spelling.
Twenty-six years of being right
To the Editor: I have said “fa-JEE-ta” since a waiter in Tucson corrected me in 1998. My husband has spent twenty-six years telling me the waiter was “messing with” me. I have laminated the column and placed it on the refrigerator, where he will see it every day for the rest of his natural life. I am not writing to gloat. I am writing so that it is in the public record.
Carol Wetzel, Quail Creek
A thin plank, but I'm standing on it
To the Editor: One margin note from one nervous friar is a thin evidentiary plank, and your columnist knows it. I remain a skeptic. That said, I have started ordering the fa-jee-tas — purely as a hedge. If the linguists are right, I am ahead of the curve. If they are wrong, I have lost nothing but the respect of one waiter, which I never had.
Gordon Plyth, Rancho Sahuarita
The obvious next question
To the Editor: If we are restoring original sounds, I direct the Ledger's attention to the name of our own town. My grandfather's maps — which I keep in excellent condition and will show anyone — render it “Sajuarita,” and he pronounced it accordingly: sa-jua-REE-ta, with the same forward J your columnist describes. I do not say the town must change. I say the town must consider.
Ernesto Vail, Sahuarita (for now)
Editor's note: The Ledger style desk is aware of the maps and is monitoring the situation.
Unrelated
To the Editor: This is about the roundabout.
Carl Dupree, Sahuarita
Editor's note: Mr. Dupree's full letter, his fourteenth on the subject, is available upon request at the Ledger offices. Bring water.
The Ledger welcomes letters of fewer than 200 words, a limit we describe as firm and enforce as a suggestion.