How do you pronounce "chaps"?

I say "SH-aps"

Cowboy In Chaps

In my 40 years of riding motorcycles I have never heard it pronounced Sh-aps. If you go into a bike shop looking for shaps you will get some very funny looks. Never, ever attend a biker rally calling them shaps. Brand new riders get teased enough, or at least they used to I am seeing more and more riders on the road with less than a year riding all the time. You may get away with it in another country or up North but don't come to Texas calling them that. I am not trying to be rude it is just In all my 57 years even around Texas cowboys that ride professionally I have never heard them called shaps.

Sh-aps...pretty sure that is the more or less legitimate proper western U.S. way. More or less in deference to the fact that California was a part of Mexico at one time. "Chaps" is a derivative of the Spanish word.

to my knowledge in the US it's CHaps, as in "boots and chaps". I've never heard of the CH being pronounced SH, in English or in Mexican spanish anyway. But then again my father-in-law is apache and he mixes sh and ch all the time. gotta be a "depends" kind of answer since you got no regional info in your question.

I say CH-aps, but as others have pointed out it all depends on what part of the world you inhabit.

If a person pronounces chaps with a hard ch- they are considered "green" in the real cowboy world...including Texas. Now Harley riders are no cowboys...so...the difference is in what you want to buy I guess. and where you're from.

CH-aps.

It is pronounced both ways:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chaps

But there is a man's clothing line call chaps. And they call it with CH. So I suspect that in USA CH is probably MORE common.

Good Luck...

If you look up the on websters dictionary...clik on the speaker icon...and it says and it shows the pronunciation as

shaps it is spelled chaps

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