Oops, I Did It Again: JaJaJa!

When I moved to the US, I was staying in Santa Clara which was not as well-known as San Jose was so whenever anyone asked me where I lived in California, I said: “I live in Santa Clara, it’s near San Jose”. Now, the way I pronounced San Jose was different than how it actually
should have been pronounced. I pronounced it San-Josay which amused people.
“Look at this another immigrant totally clueless about the Spanish language.” is what they thought. Well, like most Asians I was not exposed to Spanish back in the days so I pronounced it like any other English word would be pronounced. For me, J was always pronounced
as Jay. Then one day one of my colleagues corrected me and said: “It’s not San Josay..it’s San Hosay!” 
“Huh? Where’s the H in Jose?” I wondered. Nevertheless, I corrected my pronunciation. I thought it was probably an exception. And life went on with Hosay.

A few months later when I moved to New Jersey, I observed that one of my colleagues would always go to a particular restaurant for lunch and would bring back a large cup of soda with the name of the restaurant printed on it. Baja Fresh is what was written on it. One day when he was coming back from lunch with the cup in his hand, as usual, I asked him.
“So..another day at Baa-Jaa I suppose?” I pronounced it Baa-Jaa, which means a musical instrument in the Hindi language. 
He took a pause, trying to understand what I just said and when he made sense of it, he replied “Mm.Hmm.”
“Tell me something. Is there some live music in the restaurant?” I asked.
“No. Why do you think so?”
“Then why do they call it Baa-Jaa fresh? Baa-Jaa means a musical instrument in my language.” I asked innocently.
Now he understood my ignorance. He had a heartful laugh and then explained to me that it’s not pronounced Baa-Jaa but Baa-Haa! And suddenly San-Hosay memory rushed into my head and I figured out that it is probably a Mexican restaurant where they pronounce J as H. What an embarrassing moment it was.

But the saga didn’t end here. Now I was ever careful about the letter J and my brain would go into a high drive the moment it saw the letter J in unfamiliar words and names and the final test before I understood it fully was in Chili’s restaurant. I was with a couple of friends for lunch and when it was my turn to order, I selected a dish that I had never tried before. 
“I’d like to have Ca-Hun chicken pasta please.” And I handed the menu back to her.
“I’m sorry Sir. Can you repeat the order please?” She asked in confusion.
“I’d like to have Ca-Hun chicken pasta please.” I repeated nervously because I knew I was doing something wrong by looking at her expression.
“Do you mean Ca-Jun chicken pasta, Sir?” She asked with an amusing smile on her face.
“Yes Yes. That’s what I mean.” I replied trying to hide my embarrassment.
So I went back to check the origin of the word Cajun and found that it was nowhere related to Spanish and the deal was sealed. I had now fully understood that if the word has Spanish origin, it is most likely pronounced H instead of J.
For a while, I was confused to see that so many city names in California started with San or Santa, Santa Clara, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz etc. The list is endless. But throughout my time in California, I figured that the state was part of Mexico before and Spanish people were early settlers there and hence the names of the cities were derived from the Spanish language.