What's the difference?

My great-grandmother's name was Mary Gladys, but she went by Gladys. 

My grandmother's name was Gladys Evon, but she went by Evon.

I grew up hearing a lot about the name Gladys. My dad liked to tell the joke that ends with the punchline, "Gladys...happy bum...what's the difference?"

*****

My mom sent me a capybara advent calendar for Christmas. Behind every little door is a little capybara dressed up as something or other—a detective, a pilot, a superhero, you name it.

She also sent me a copy of Bill Peet's Capyboppy, remembering that I quite enjoyed that story as a child and it ignited an interest in these rodents of unusual size. I very much appreciated sharing the story with my children and I happen to think the little capybaras are cute. 

Phoebe, however, does not love when it's her turn to open the capybara calendar. She much prefers to have a turn on the LEGO calendar. 

Today—a day when she was feeling particularly cantankerous—happened to be a capybara day for Phoebe. This was not good.

"I don't want the barracuda one!" she wailed.

And that's it. That's the joke. 

She can't keep barracuda and capybara straight in her head. 

They are wildly different creatures, genetically speaking, and I don't think anyone would ever mistake one for the other, but phonetically they are rather similar. 

Barracuda...capybara...what's the difference?

Although Phoebe is keenly looking forward to joining the Rapid Barracudas (our swim team) in the spring, she simply dreads the disappointment of capybara day. 

*****

Now, when I was first reading about capybaras, I didn't really have anyone around to tell me how to pronounce the word. Our first exposure to it, as far as I know, was through the book Capyboppy and I'm fairly certain my mom said "cay-pee-bop-pee," or perhaps "cah-pee-bop-pee." 

I also grew up saying pass-stuh instead of paw-stuh for "pasta," and dram-a (like ram-a, but dram-a) instead of draw-muh for "drama," and ca-PILL-ary instead of CAP-illary for "capillary."

I like to attribute some oddities of my accent to Canadian Vowel Raising (though I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate). That said, there are many words that I know I grew up saying "correctly," because everyone else around me would also say them that way, but which cannot be found in any pronunciation guide (see, for example: "drama").

So...long story short, I say "cay-pee-bare-uh," or (if I'm trying to pronounce it American-ly) "cap-pee-bar-uh."

But evidently neither of those pronunciations are correct. 

Apparently it's cap-uh-bar-uh. 

And I feel a bit cantankerous about that. 

Because if you look up the Portuguese, it's capivara from the Tupi words capi (grass) and uara (eater). 

So, it should be pronounced more like cah-pee-vah-rah. 

It has to be pee because /i/ says ee in Portuguese. And then all the /a/ sounds need to be nice and ahhh-like. So we should be saying cah-pee-bah-rah. 

But I'm more or less resigned to the fact that I'll never get it right.