Quote Originally Posted by alexsms View Post
Just a technical question,
(I am not a drinker of this beverage)

There is a controversy about how the word 'mate' must be pronounced correctly.
But as the origin is Spanish (or Portugese), it would be desirable to stress the first syllable.
So the question is how it is pronounced in your language.
In Russian it is pronounced мате by most of the people, which seems incorrect.
English Wikipedia indicates that the Spanish name of the beverage sounds like мате and the Portuguese like мачи.

By the way, the pronunciation мате turns the Spanish word into a past-tense first-person verb: yo maté = я убил(а), "I have killed"!

But, unsurprisingly, some English speakers apparently use the incorrect pronunciation, putting the stress on the "e" instead of the "a", and often adding an acute accent over the "e" in writing. Linguists call this a "hyperforeignism."

Another famous example in US English is the common name of the (чрезвычайно остро-пикантный- жгучий!!!) pepper Capsicum chinense. The Spanish spelling is "habanero" (pronounced абанэро), but many English-speaking Americans say the word as though the spelling were "jabañero" (хабанеро or even хабанъйэро).