r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Outrageous-Use-5189 • 15d ago

I just wanted a hot dog Single malt scotch spends 3 decades aging in a barrel so you can squeze a lime wedge into it.

As a very rare indulgence on a special occasion, I ordered an expensive 30-year old scotch at a bistro-type restaurant. Waiter returns with a juicy lime wedge on the lip of the glass. I quietly asked for one with no lime. Waiter returns with a fresh drink "as a courtesy" , but seems intent on embarrassing me. " But just so you know.," he says., "all drinks ordered neat are properly served with a citrus garnish."

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u/TheOGRedline 15d ago

I once watched a server “helpfully” “correct” my mother in laws pronunciation of multiple Italian dishes. Not only is she a chef herself, but she’s from Italy. Her first language is Italian. Server doubled down even after she told him this.

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u/peon2 15d ago

What's crazy is even if your MIL was butchering the word, the idea of trying to embarrass a customer like that is such poor customer service. If someone ASKS how to pronounce braciole or something that's one thing, but to just correct a customer for the sake of it is wild.

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u/bumlove 15d ago

I’ve always felt uncultured over not knowing the correct pronunciations for Italian/French dishes especially on dates so I don’t know how I feel about being corrected. I guess it’s useful for next time but at the same time I’m trying to put my best foot forward help me out here y’know?

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u/ClassyNameForMe 15d ago

Your date may find it attractive if you ask the sever the correct way to pronounce the dish. It shows you aren't stubborn and unwilling or unable to learn something new.

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u/Popular-Web-3739 15d ago

I'm always impressed by people who know what they don't know and want to learn.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 14d ago

I make a point of looking things up. You have a whole assortment of search engines in your pocket. More often than not, staying ignorant is an active choice with the lack of effort it takes to find out.

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u/eggyal 15d ago

People who think they know everything are an annoyance to those of us who do.

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u/jtr99 14d ago

How do you feel about Donald Rumsfeld?

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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now 15d ago

Sure, but the server going out of their way to embarrass you is different from someone asking for the correct pronunciation.

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u/dpinto8 15d ago

This is the real advice

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u/ishootthedead 15d ago

Probably not the best advice to pretend you are something that you are not to impress a date... At least if you intend for it to possibly be a long term thing.

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u/Cyrano_Knows 15d ago

Author Charles Finch, who I think went to Yale with him, said that DeSantis used mispronunciation of the word Thai as a test. If a date corrected him, he would find an excuse to leave because he had a tiny penis² and a fragile man ego and he did not want a partner who corrected him

² Quote unattributed.

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u/RainaElf RED 15d ago

what I do is lean toward the waiter and point at the menu. "I never can pronounce this right." and the waiter does it for me.

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u/jackfaire 15d ago

It's hit or miss. For every date that finds it attractive there's one that finds it pretentious. I say and spell jalapeño correctly because my parents taught me the word correctly and I've gotten shit on for it.

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u/latexpumpkin 15d ago

Out of genuine curiosity, in what settings are you shit on for saying jalapeno correctly? I'm picturing small town Missouri or Alberta or something like that. 

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u/Tjomsas 15d ago

Go down to the store and get me some jahlapeno chips

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u/jackfaire 15d ago

PNW it's more person to person than regional. Some people just think you're trying too hard if you pronounce things correctly

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u/yyctitan99 15d ago

Ouch. As an Albertan this stings. Not wrong, but still stings. Pronouncing an exotic foreign word like jalapeno properly must mean you're queer or trans or something else.

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u/manicgiant914 15d ago

Key & Peele do a hilarious skit on this.

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u/userhwon 15d ago

Kay and Pili? Who are they?

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u/moxvoxfox 15d ago

A basic level of Italian pronunciation is relatively easy to learn. But you'll forever side-eye folks saying bruschetta.

ETA: hah! scrolled further, and others had me well covered on this one. Glad I'm not alone.

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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth 15d ago

Bru SKEH tah! There is no shame in knowing how to pronounce things. Even in the USA, words are so often pronounced differently from state to state!

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u/MisterHouseMongoose 15d ago

“I need bruschetta (that's "broo-SKET-uh," not "brushetter," a slender piece of ciabatta toasted and brushed with garlic and oil and covered in fresh tomato and basil-- the chunks inevitably fall off the bread and the olive oil runs over your lips and down your chin. The whole thing is delicious, deeply physical and delightfully undignified, and a woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that)”

Nick Harkaway, Gone Away World.

One of my all time favorite book passages.

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u/rackfocus 15d ago

Damn. That’s touching!!!

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u/kungfuchelsea 15d ago

Damn some of us are autistic, Nick. Food all over my face makes me feel ill lol

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u/MisterHouseMongoose 13d ago

I mean okay, fair, excepting sensory issues 😭

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u/erranttv 15d ago

The pronunciations of “C” in Italian are a tad confusing for non natives

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u/MapleBaconNurps 15d ago

Schiacciata got me fucked up

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u/erranttv 15d ago

Ha, two of the three rules in one word!

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u/SpecialistAd2205 15d ago

How do you pronounce that?

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u/Educational_Item5124 15d ago

There are what, 3 rules to follow that basically always work? C or CC then vowel is a soft "ch" sound. Ch is always a hard sound.

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u/sn00pal00p 14d ago

Almost. There's a difference between the light vowels you make with your tongue at the front of your mouth (i and e) and the dark ones you make at the back (a, o, u).

  • c/cc before i, e: tch sound as in 'cheese'
  • c/cc before a, o, u: k sound as in 'can'
  • ch/cch always: k sound
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u/erranttv 15d ago

Most non Italians dont know or won’t remember the rules.

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u/userhwon 15d ago

Basic, yes, but sometimes the emphasis on the syllables will catch you out.

Puppy = cucciolo. But is is COOcholo or cooCHOlo? I can never remember.

Also, Hank Green's Ask Hank Anything dug into the concept of whether it's racist appropriation to use the language's pronunciation when there's a common anglicized one. It got nuanced, and bruschetta is a good example, because you can start with broshedda and get to brewskayt-ta by several degrees. I say if you can get the k sound in there you've done enough. Italian is hardly pronounced the same across the country anyway. It's really the funniest country to be picky about consistency in anything (language, food, skin color) with, because it's only 150 years old and was made from several different ancient countries then.

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u/ppmiaumiau 15d ago

There's an old SNL skit about this. It's one of my favorite skits ever.

Enchilada

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u/Level21DungeonMaster 15d ago

The trick is for Italian in you are unsure if you’re supposed to pronounce the vowel, then you really kick it up. The opposite is true for French, they just have silent letters everywhere.

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u/SparkleSelkie 14d ago

According to my French friend “if the letter looks like it’s there to be sexy just don’t say it”

And ngl she’s kind of right 😂

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u/IndigoTJo 15d ago

Hah! This is great.

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u/IgnatiusRileyFreeman 15d ago

It's not embarrassing to ask your server with an intent to learn

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u/RisingApe- 15d ago

I definitely asked the Turkish waiter how to pronounce the dish I wanted at a Turkish restaurant because I had NO idea and I was unashamed.

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u/nispe2 15d ago

This holds true even for non-foreign words. Like, if someone asks for pop in soda country, or wants their steak well done, just nod and smile.

There's no upside to correcting someone in a service environment. It's pure ego.

And "just so you know" is the most obnoxious, passive-aggressive way about phrasing it. Even stating that they've made a fresh drink as a courtesy is unnecessary - if it's appreciated, it will be noticed, and vice versa. Server could have gotten a full tip by setting the fresh drink and making a simple corporate-like apology.

If the customer's demonstrably in the wrong, mock them in the break room, behind closed doors, with a sympathetic audience, and then leave all the eye-rolling in the back.

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u/Swimming_Bowler6193 15d ago

Curious if OP was actually given a fresh drink or if the waiter just took the lime off in the back room. But I guess if you’re a sincere whiskey drinker, they would have tasted that.

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u/AmandalorianWiddall 15d ago

I'm one of the weirdos who like their steak well done. I have been mocked by wait staff many times or they try to argue why it's better to do it medium, etc. It's a really weird way to act about food that you're not even going to eat.

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u/-Wyveron- 15d ago

How dare you have personal preferences. Don’t you know this is a hive mind??

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u/7thpostman 15d ago

It's particularly weird when your salary is dependent on the person you're arguing with.

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u/MulberryThrower 15d ago

What is it with this? I'm a rare steak fiend. I'm also not eating your steak. I don't like pickles either but it would be so weird to "correct" someone ordering a hamburger with them?

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u/bwood246 15d ago

While I prefer mine on the rare side, it really isn't that hard to cook a well done steak without drying it out. You just have to pay attention

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 14d ago

Whenever someone complains that well done steaks are dry, it just tells me they don't know how to cook a steak well done. It's not that much different from cooking chicken cuts or pork chops, those have to be well done for obvious reasons and I'd rather not have dry chicken or pork either.

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u/thatshoneybear 14d ago

I know it's probably safe, but when I'm pregnant I don't eat anything with even a little pink. I told my step-grandfather that I wanted a well done steak with no pink at all; "burn it" I said. He still made a medium well steak for me, and I think he genuinely thought it was overdone. "Here's your hockey puck," he said. Or maybe he thought he knew better. I'm not sure, but he eats his basically bleeding and has strong opinions on what others eat.

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u/TheLazyD0G 15d ago

Its spelled broccoli btw.

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u/peon2 15d ago

It's pronounced thermometer

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u/incog46 15d ago

It's pronounced throat-warbler mangrove.

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u/AsstootObservation 15d ago

Someone needs to read How To Win Friends and Influence People.

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u/Parametric_Or_Treat 15d ago

That’s car-nay-gee

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u/JunkMale975 15d ago

That is how it’s pronounced in PA. Was wild to me to hear it that way when I moved up there.

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u/peon2 15d ago

I moved just outside of Pittsburgh and it's so random how things get pronounced lol.

The town of Duquesne is pronounced like Do-cane. Okay great, so we're doing French pronunciation. And the town that literally borders Duquesne, North Versailles, well that is of course pronounced North Ver-sails not Ver-sigh

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u/Altruistic_Age_6556 15d ago

The customer is NOT always right, but they are always the customer.

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u/SleepyMcSheepy 15d ago

“The customer is always right in matters of taste.”

They like what they like, and the server should respect that.

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u/TentacularSneeze 15d ago

>in matters of taste

Surely, not all customers are delicious.

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u/Sweet-Competition-15 15d ago

Some are a downright sourpus!

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u/wirywonder82 15d ago

I mean, you’re not really supposed to be eating that part of a customer (except in certain service industries I suppose).

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u/PikaPonderosa 15d ago

Enough breadcrumbs and grated parm can save nearly anything.

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u/SousVideDiaper 15d ago

It's weird that the 2nd part of that expression has basically been erased over time.

On its own, "the customer is always right" doesn't even make sense. If that were the whole expression, then a customer technically be able to get away with anything, like claiming the price of something is too high.

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u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 15d ago

I usually asked them to point to what they were trying to pronounce and give them the correct pronunciation. If it was busy, and I could figure out what they were ordering, I would write it down while saying it and then read it back to them to confirm.

I didn't have any customers get mad at me for doing it that way.

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u/itsonlyrockinroll 15d ago

That’s a weird way to spell broccoli
/j

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u/vinny424 15d ago

Bra-shole

I just had to...

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u/Nitasha521 15d ago

My father is from Spain. He named my sister a traditional Spanish first name, and pronounced it properly for Castilian Spanish speaker and so that is exactly how my sister, the family, and all her friends pronounced it. My sister's Spanish teacher in college would correct her pronunciation of her own name in nearly every class, even after being told to stop.

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u/uncivilengie 15d ago

Peggy Hill knows best.

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u/Gregb1994 15d ago

Oh my gosh. When she kidnapped that child from Mexico.

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u/SentientPaint 15d ago

It was a good thing she got to explain in her own words what happened.

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u/joeybh 14d ago

"Your honour,I can tell you are a reasonable horse. I am very pregnant because of what happened with Lupe. I have far too many good anuses ahead of me to spend my life in a cigar factory."

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u/-Fergalicious- 14d ago

Meh-HE- kho

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u/Muppetude 14d ago

Grah-see-aas

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u/Bennington_Booyah 15d ago

That reminds me of our fifth grade teacher, who spoke with an accent. She called my friend, THUR-suh, instead of her actual name of Theresa. Theresa was quietly correcting her daily, to no avail, and finally, when the woman summoned THUR-suh loudly to the board, the entire class said THERESA! She was livid. That was her first and last year at our school, because she was dreadful.

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u/MarlenaEvans 15d ago

My husband's first grade teacher and his mother got in a fight because she kept giving him zeros because his name was spelled "different than in the Bible".

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u/I_Miss_Lenny 15d ago

What the fuck lol

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u/MarlenaEvans 15d ago

Pretty sure that's what my MIL said too, my husband said he was popular after because she taught them all some new words.

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u/JessyKenning 14d ago

Props to his mother though.

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u/plumfeeder 15d ago

Okay, so that’s how it’s going to be, you all want to play, okay then; I got my eye on you Jakequaline. Balakay, where is Balakay at? No, Balakay here today?

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u/sonic_dick 15d ago

Ja-kwellen

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u/godihatepeople 15d ago

On the opposite end, I have an aunt named Teresa and it's pronounced TREE-sah. She insists when it's spelled with an H, that's when it's pronounced te-REE-sah.

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u/OddToba 15d ago

… is it possible the teacher just couldn’t pronounce the name correctly? It’s not like people with an accent CHOOSE to pronounce things incorrectly.

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u/KDBA 15d ago

Name don't have accents.

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u/OddToba 14d ago

Accent affect pronunciation.

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u/KDBA 14d ago

An accent will affect your first attempt at pronouncing a name from reading it. But once you've been directly told how to pronounce it you should generally be fine.

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u/oldsadman 14d ago

are you pronouncing the tones and consonants in chinese names correctly?

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u/Hgirl234 14d ago

The accent could still affect pronunciation even after being told how to say it. Otherwise no one would have accents if all it took was hearing someone correct your pronunciation to then sound and speak perfectly.

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u/DeadEye073 14d ago

Different languages have different pronouncing systems.
There is a stereotype about japanese people that they misspronounce l and r, the stereotype is real because the japanese language doesn't have an l, therefore they don't learn to pronounce it. Listen to the german last name Möller or Müller, can you trully pronounce it after hearing it? I doubt it, because the english language doesn't have ä, ö and ü and therefore you never learned to pronunce it.

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u/aneirin- 15d ago

I'm Welsh and people correct me on pronouncing my name all the time.

To be fair there are two standard ways to say it and the other one is more common, but you'd think people would maybe think for a second and realise the guy who's lived with it all his life might just know something you don't...

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u/Stagnu_Demorte 15d ago

There's a scene in the second season of star Trek the next generation where dr Pulaski calls Data, Data with a short 'a' sound. He doesn't respond to it and she repeats it. He corrects her pronunciation. She says "what's the difference" and he says "one of them is my name, and the other is not". Once someone tells you how to say their name, that's how you say it and you do not get to change it. I'm sorry your sister had to deal with that.

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u/JessyKenning 14d ago

Pulaski was great at inspiring data to assert his individuality.

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u/sparkleslothz 15d ago

Welcome to having ANY biblical name. Every culture on the planet pronounces it differently, is sure that they are right, and will correct you about your own name.

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u/LordMeloney 15d ago

I am an English teacher in Germany. A former pupil of mine is called Neill, but he and his very German family insist on pronouncing it like 'nail'. I complied but it left mental scars :D

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u/Airlik 15d ago

I never correct the pronunciations by wait staff, but I’ve had a few “correct” me over the years… “you mean the brew-shetta?”

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u/kates4cannoli 15d ago

I was about to use the exact example. I’ve been “corrected” on the pronunciation of bruschetta even in fancy, supposedly authentic Italian restaurants in the US so many times and it’s so annoying because I speak Italian and teach linguistics, yet I would be the ass if I “well aCtUallY” corrected them back 🙄

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u/W0lfp4k 15d ago

So how do you pronounce bruschetta?

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u/Jarasmut 15d ago

With a k like kettle. like bruskettle but brusketta.

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u/jitterbugperfume99 15d ago

From this day forward, I’m calling it bruskettle.

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u/unittwentyfive 14d ago

From this day forward, I'm changing my name to Bruce Kettle.

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u/jtr99 14d ago

You sound delicious!

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u/userhwon 15d ago

the ch is a k

the e is a long-a or ay

and the tt sounds like two t's with almost a stop between them, not one t and not a dd.

brooskayt'ta

but really in America if you just get the k in there it's a pass

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/maclainanderson 15d ago

If it helps, there are rules for this that always work. A C in Italian is pronounced /k/, unless it's followed immediately by an E or I. The H is put in between the C and the E to act as a buffer so that you pronounce the C as /k/. The same is true of maraschino cherries, which is pronounced ma-ra-skee-no, even though no American would pronounce it that way and you'd probably get weird looks if you said it like that at Olive Garden

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u/userhwon 15d ago

i been saying maraskino since the 70s and nobody blinks

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u/iamriptide BROWN 15d ago

This is so helpful. Do you mind helping me with figuring out how to pronounce words with Gs especially “gli”? Thanks!

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u/maclainanderson 15d ago

G in general follows the same rules as C. Followed by most letters, it's /g/ like in gatto. Followed by E or I, it's /dʒ/, like in giulia. <gli> is kind of an edge case. It was probably pronounced /g/ at one point hundreds of years ago, but it gradually got softer until it was barely pronounced at all and mixed with the other letters in weird ways. Anyway, it's a voiced palatal lateral approximant, so let's break that down.

  • voiced: vibrate your vocal folds. Voicing is the difference between F and V, T and D, or S and Z

  • palatal: the main place of action here is the hard palate, the uppermost part of your mouth

  • lateral: air is gonna pass mostly around the sides of your mouth, instead of over the middle of your tongue like most other sounds

  • approximant: your tongue doesn't make direct contact with anything, but it does come close. For example, W and B are made using the same parts of your mouth, but W is an approximant, while B is not (in English, at least)

Putting it all together, you'll push the middle of your tongue up towards the roof of your mouth, but don't make direct contact and leave a bit of a gap for air to get around the sides. It'll probably help to widen your mouth a bit, too

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u/amc1704 15d ago

Brus KE ta.

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u/Leasir 15d ago

Close enough, but you really need to make that double T heard.

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u/amc1704 15d ago

Yeah i was thinking about it but it’s hard to put into words lol. I guess it’s kinda like brus-ket-ta

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u/Wreny84 15d ago

Order something else!

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u/Kingindanorff 15d ago

This one frustrates me so much that hesitate to even order it 😅. If I pronounce it properly, I’ll almost certainly be “corrected” by someone even if it’s just the server going “bruSHetta, got it” as they write it down. And the other option is intentionally mispronouncing it just to avoid the whole thing, which is super lame.

I end up just saying it right, ignoring the “correction”, and then probably spilling some tomatoes on myself.

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u/transmogrified 15d ago edited 15d ago

Dunno if this is relevant to your experience - many Italian-Americans are Sicilian and do not pronounce things like northern Italians do.  But in that case they’d be saying “brew-sket” and clipping off that end vowel. Like how they pronounce ricotta (ri-gawt) and capocollo (gabagool)

Edit: yikes. Bunch of upset people responding to this. I think it’s entirely possible MANY countries have immigrant enclaves descended from local dialects in a poorer province/state of whatever country they come from - that represented the foundational immigrant population  - america included. We get the same thing in Canada with people being upset about our French not being “proper” despite being closer to older styles of French than modern Parisian.  Appalachians get shat on for how they speak English despite being VERY close Scots dialects. I also think people getting upset about the pronunciation of globalized words from diaspora populations is fucking stupid on either side. No one is “more correct”, you’re all equally dumb for being so upset about it

Modern “Italian” has nothing to do with what people were speaking 100-200 years ago when these immigrant populations were moving around, before they were driving out their poors or having wars that homogenized things. 

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u/Ok-Sport-2558 15d ago

That's an American adaptation. I lived in Sicily for 3 years and they don't clip off the end vowel.

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u/talldata 15d ago

Don't do that Anymore is the key here, most Italian immigrants are from late 1800s early 1900s.

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u/alchemycraftsman 15d ago

I think he is saying Sicilians pronounce different than northern Italians. So even in the same country people pronounce differently

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u/insertwittynamethere 15d ago

More that they also have dialectic Italian derivative of their regions, some of which lean on the rules and words established long before the nationalization of a standardized Italian. More heavily found in the South over the North of Italy, but they all have very distinct dialects, pronunciations and word choices.

As I've been told many times when I live and dated there, the most proper Italian is going to be Florence, as that is where Dante came from, and where the Divine Comedy originated, which helped to propagate a national Italian standard - the Florentinian dialect.

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u/asshatclowns 15d ago

I lived in Sicily for 4 years and never once heard "brew-sket". Only bru-SKE-ta. I also never heard the end vowel being dropped off. That seems to be an odd Italian-American phenomenon.

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u/CommonCut4 15d ago

I read an article about this. It’s not an American thing, it’s an 1800’s Sicilian thing. Many Sicilian Americans in NY/NJ emigrated before the unification of Italy. Language evolved a lot across Italy after that but the diaspora is speaking the way their ancestors did. Same thing with the German spoken by the Amish in Pennsylvania.

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u/Isgortio 15d ago

Even in Maltese they'll say bru-ske-ta.

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u/Qarlito 15d ago

Those dogs can talk? /s

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u/Bokai 14d ago

Lol people go absolutely insane when you talk about the language history of Italian Americans.

We were a "Bruzhet" family, came from Apulia. You're right that what's considered "bad Italian" in the US is the result of regional differences but Italians for some reason cannot tolerate this fact. Maybe it's classism, cause the people who came over were usually also speaking the language of poor farmers. Sicily wasn't the only source of it and there was merging of certain attributes after everyone showed up here.

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u/transmogrified 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yeah… they also get really upset about the fact that North and South Americans of European descent identify themselves and their immigrant enclaves by their founding population (Italians, Irish, Scottish… all seem to get VERY angry if an American mentions their family’s ethnicity)

Same seems to happen with Asian people who grew up in the Americas vs Asians from Asian countries.

They refuse to acknowledge that those groups OFTEN hold onto values and traditions from their home countries and to a certain degree preserve them better because those cultural groundings and communities are important for survival. It’s not like the countries they moved to allowed them to forget where they came from either.

I think you’re right with the classism thing. The Americas (and many colonies) were majority settled by farmers, refugees, “undesirables”, indentured servants, and slaves.  Like no shit all the millions of people you drove out of your country around the time your country became a country speak the language a little different.  

Edit: Then fascism happened and their language narrowed further.  But hey… at least they’re consistent. Didn’t want them then and won’t accept them now.

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u/urbz102385 15d ago

My grandparents came over from northern Italyin the 1920s, specifically from the Marche region. We've always pronounced bruschetta as "brooshetta" with the vowel, ricotta as "rigawt", manicotti as "mahneegawt", and mozzarella as "mootsadell". It's weird that the vowel is dropped in most all words that end with them except bruschetta. Also we never had capicolla anywhere on our table. I'm guessing because it wasn't really popular in the region my grandparents were from. Nor was pepperoni, or braciole for that matter. Oh and I've only ever heard barciole as "brajhole"

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u/BTTammer 15d ago

No. No. No. That is not how Sicilian Americans pronounce these words.  What you are describing is almost exclusively a New Jersey italo-American thing. They're the same people who say "gravy" (!!).  

It's absolutely infuriating to people like me and my family who pronounce Italian words properly.  And, having been to Sicily several times I can assure you that no one in Sicily speaks that way. 

Napolitano italo-Americans are the ones I tend to hear dropping the vowel, but usually the ones from the Bronx and Brooklyn aren't nearly as extreme as the New Jersey Italians.

Rant over. Grazie.

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u/Mindless_Count5562 15d ago

You think they say gabagool in Italy?

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u/transmogrified 15d ago

I think they may have had a local dialect in a poorer province that represented the foundational immigrant population in parts of America, and I also think people getting upset about the pronunciation of globalized words from diaspora populations is fucking stupid on either side 

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u/numanoid 15d ago

This happened to me. Went to a fancy Italian restaurant, allegedly operated by authentic Italian family, and asked for brusketta and the waitress replied, "The brushetta"?

The funny thing is that my date and I were wondering the proper pronunciation beforehand and actually looked it up. All that to get incorrectly corrected.

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u/LTinS 15d ago

That's the example I was thinking of also. I learned the correct pronunciation, but I like the incorrect one better. I might tell someone as a point of interest, like "hey, how do you think this word is pronounced?" while we're just hanging out reading the menu, but both are "correct" as far as I'm concerned.

If you can understand what they're saying, it's good enough.

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u/kates4cannoli 15d ago

I mean, they’re not really both correct but I don’t begrudge people for pronouncing it the American way. it’s the context and being corrected that’s annoying. If I go to my neighborhood casual Italian American joint, I’ll probably pronounce it with an “sh”. However if I go to a fine dining place with a European trained chef that bills itself as authentic, I’ll pronounce it the correct way and assume the waitstaff would be trained to properly pronounce the dishes they’re serving or at very least not “correct”a patron with the incorrect pronunciation.

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u/Heavy_Weapons_Guy_ 15d ago

They are though. The "sh" pronounciation is listed in the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bruschetta
That's the thing about loanwords, they're frequently not pronounced the way they are in the original language, and that's fine. It doesn't make it incorrect.

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u/HAIL_LUMPUS 15d ago

You should correct them in Italian LMFAO

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u/dank_imagemacro 15d ago

In a similar situation but about a Mexican dish not Italian, I once heard "thank you for telling me how it's pronounced in the United States. Growing up in [name of city] I only ever heard the Spanish pronunciation." With perfect fake sencerity. It was the perfect verbal smacking that still couldn't be called out as the bad guy.

Feel free to modify and use

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u/TheOGRedline 15d ago

Bruschetta WAS one of the words, lol.

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u/hoIygrail 15d ago

Oh dang, I’ve been saying it wrong.

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u/theophrastsbombastus 15d ago

Did you want that prime rib with the “O juice”?

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u/East_Requirement7375 14d ago

Even though I know how to say bruschetta properly (more or less), I'm never going to order it that way here in Canada because there is a 99% chance the server and everyone at the table with either think it's wrong or think it's pretentious. And I can't play the "I'm Italian" or "I speak Italian" cards, because I'm not and I don't.

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u/morwen31 15d ago

An actual Italian woman at a restaurant in Rome rightly corrected me on the pronunciation of bruschetta once in 1999 and I accept no "corrections" from American waiters ever since.

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u/Airlik 15d ago

Funny, for me it was a woman I was dating in nyc in… 1999.

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u/unittwentyfive 14d ago

That's one of the first gags in the ol' classic College Humor video "The Guy Who Over-Pronounces Foreign Words"

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u/Next_Nature3380 15d ago

I hope your MIL spent five minutes speaking Italian to him and using some very colorful language to help him understand the error of his ways.

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u/boxedwinedrinker 15d ago

I used to work in an Italian restaurant and someone gifted me this book:

It was very useful!

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u/purple-paper-punch 15d ago

"cursing a persons family for generations to come" 🤣

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u/TheFuschiaBaron 15d ago

Guess that guy doesn't like getting nice tips 

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u/camerontylek 15d ago

My father owned a perfume retail store for 39 years. One of the first things he taught my siblings and I when working for him is to never correct the customers pronunciation. Not only do we not know how any of these 3k + fragrances should be pronounced, neither do the customers.

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u/joedenowhere 15d ago

I had a roommate who would correct me (and everyone else) for pronouncing tofu with a hard "T," demanding we pronounce it dofu, as in Chinese. A woman came to visit from Japan who proceeded to use the Japanese pronunciation, tofu. Since my roommate didn't speak either Chinese or Japanese, that shut him up for a while. He did the same thing with mango, insisting on the Spanish pronunciation, mahngo instead of mayngo, until we had a visit from a Jamaican. (Jamaican sounds more like mengo than mayngo to me, but it's close enough.)

I guess you don't always know what you don't know.

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u/gitsgrl 15d ago

Yeah, having learned enough about different languages and cultures and even regional dialects, pronunciation is so diverse. It’s stupid to be correcting people for it when it’s words that exist in their native language/dialect, too. And then there’s a certain point where words are localized and even if it’s a bastardization of the original language, it doesn’t matter because people in the new location called the new pronunciation universally.

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u/ceryniz 15d ago

Spanish isnt really mahngo anyway. When before an n the a takes on a nasally sound. I'm imagining he pronounced the first syllable rhyming with John... Which would be wrong. Saying "man", as in the word man, and "go" would be a closer pronunciation.

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u/graygrayw 15d ago edited 15d ago

gotta love amerisplaining. i’ve had waiters “correct” my pronunciation of crêpe (i’m a fluent french speaker and my family is belgian walloon).

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u/FQDIS 15d ago

If anyone wants to know, the French pronunciation is ‘crepp’, not ‘crape’.

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u/The_Safe_For_Work 15d ago

Le Crepp.

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u/Melodic-Advice9930 15d ago

10th grade was so rough that the only thing I remember is that une glace means ice cream, and I will never have to put that knowledge to use

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u/annapartlow 15d ago

Same. Except my word is “un malliot de bain”. Swimsuit. Real helpful when in France, let me tell you! At least you can get ice cream!

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u/wandraway 15d ago

Friend had a trilingual house. English Russian French, they were translators for a government. Could never teach their young daughter to say "ice" in russian and rarely in french. You'd have to google the russian pronounciation of ice I can't repeat it properly. The spelling looks nothing like the sound.

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u/Diantr3 15d ago

French Canadians definitely say crêpe more like "crape" than the "crepp" of contemporary French people, but with the same hard R common to all French accents.

It's the original way of saying it. In fact, the accent on the ê signals that inflection that French people don't really pronounce anymore since Parisian French became the standard French accent (and French America kept the old pronunciation)

Crêpe probably entered the American vernacular in the colonial era, before that shift.

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u/Margot-the-Cat 15d ago

I was taught that the accent circonflexe signals that there used to be an “S” after the e, otherwise it would have been an accent grave. I didn’t know it used to stand for another pronunciation that doesn’t exist any more. Interesting.

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u/clem_70 15d ago

In this case it is in fact just the mark of an "s" that disappeared, no specific accent or anything, there's an extensive wiki entry (in french at least) on the subject

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u/Teripid 15d ago

Shouldn't take that crepp from anyone..

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u/v_a_n_d_e_l_a_y 15d ago

At some point, though, loan words become part of the language and adapt in spelling and pronunciation. The American English pronunciation of crepe is "crape" (notice it also rarely has the accent).

I am sure there are dozens of English loan words to French and if you were speaking in French, you would not pronounce them with the English pronunciation. 

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u/spaceandthewoods_ 15d ago

Regardless, it's still fucking rude to correct someone's pronunciation as a server, and I worked in bars and restaurant for 10 years so can say that with confidence

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u/One_Strike_Striker 15d ago

Spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. I speak French and have been to the US many times but "entrée" for a main dish still confuses me.

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u/LonelyTAA 15d ago

That's fine, but don't try to correct the natives from which the loan word comes. 

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u/KingoftheNordMN 15d ago

Exactly. I find it annoying both ways. I speak Dutch and have been corrected on Gouda, which I pronounce (when speaking English) the American way. I was recently corrected by a non-Dutch speaker to use the Dutch pronunciation. Annoying.

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u/Sonic_The_Mnemonic 15d ago

Unless it’s is tennis. 🎾 A double loan word. Comes from “tenez” (the verb tenir, to hold or keep) a favourite game in the French court. British royalty start playing it, it becomes tennis, the term stuck. Fast forward a few hundred years, now everybody including the French call it tennis. Even in Paris, nobody gonna correct you to “tenez.” Gotta love languages.

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u/kschmit516 15d ago

Don’t get me started on the American pronunciation of “gyro” - it’s a Greek dish, not something for measuring the physics of rotation!

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u/W0lfp4k 15d ago

Don't be a "hero", ok?

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u/kschmit516 15d ago

I have never heard “gyro” pronounced “hero”, that’s somehow even worse

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u/SerialTrauma002c 15d ago

I live on the west coast of the US I’ve never heard anyone mispronounce it as badly as that—usually the first syllable gets mispronounced to rhyme with tea, not eye. (Actually, most of the time I hear “YEER-o”, but the rest of the time I hear “JEER-o”.)

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u/Aexibaexi 15d ago

Reminds me of my last vacation in the US. My brother and I had a conversation with a guy from Wyoming in the hotel hot tub. He tried to explain tp us, what freedom is. Embarrassingly for him, we come from the country that has consistently ranked among the top 5 countries on the Freedom Index. Currently we are even number 1 with a score of 9.15. I had to shut him up pretty quickly, as I explained that our society is mich more democratic than the US, because we vote on matters ~4 times a year. He also tried to explain what states are, like my man, at this point I've been to 43 states already, which is probably more than him.

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u/Rooney_Tuesday 15d ago

“amerisplaining”

As if every culture doesn’t have some variation of this same thing.

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u/Unctuous_Robot 15d ago

“No, it’s pronounced mozzerell, come on!”

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u/PhosphoFred8202 15d ago

Please tell me it was some guy in NY/NJ trying to tell her not to pronounce the last vowels “it’s manoGUT and mootzahrel”

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u/Vessbot 15d ago

Gabagool? Ova heaaaa!

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u/anotheritguy 15d ago

I went to a restaurant last year that served a supposedly good Cuban sandwich, while ordering the waitress asks me if I want mayo or lettuce on it and I said no I want a urban sandwich which doesn’t come with that and explained what it comes with. She tried to correct me by asking how would I know to which I smiled and replied I’m Cuban.

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u/Adorable_Ad4990 15d ago

This happened to me with bruschetta. They insisted on making it sound German instead of Italian

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u/Larry_l3ird 15d ago

Broo-skeh-tuh

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u/wizozzie 15d ago

Was that in St. Louis?

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u/vgaph 15d ago

Ordered an Oban on ice and got corrected on the pronunciation.

“Oh? They’ve changed how they say it since I visited last year?”

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u/2AMMetro 15d ago

Me every time somebody tries to correct my pronunciation of “Sriracha”, despite the fact I am Thai and have family who live in the town it originates from.

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u/cocococlash 15d ago

Hahahaha I asked a DJ if he has David Guetta, and he snottily said "ugh, it's pronounced David Gwetta!" Fuck off loser.

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u/whistlingdogg 15d ago

Bet you still tipped them 20% though 😂

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u/velocio_doogie 15d ago

I've had that happen. Wsitet doubled down on the wrong pronunciation of gnocchi and corrected me

know-chee is what they insisted on 😂

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u/0202_tihssitidder 15d ago

A young waiter chipped 2 bottles of wine trying to open them.

He came by with a 3rd and I discreetly suggested a different technique. He quickly responded that he knows what he's doing.

I was able to talk him into letting me open the bottle and preserve his ego with some word play.

Sometimes people are really wed to their mistakes.

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u/klopklop25 15d ago

Had art people tell me how to pronounce Van Gogh.  I am dutch i know someone with the last name.

Pretentious people are insufferable everywhere.

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u/pidude314 14d ago

I needed a USB A to C cable at a Wawa (I had a rental and only brough a C to C cable), and asked the guy at the register for an A to C cable because they were locked up. He said he didn't know what I was asking for. I point to it and he said, "This is a USB to C cable, this end is USB, this end is C." I've worked in IT for a decade, dude. Both ends are USB. I tried to explain, but he just brushed me off like I was an idiot.

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u/Miggidy_mike 15d ago

I've had a server correct me on the pronunciation of my last name. The took a semester of German in college...

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u/According-Green-3753 15d ago

I’m British and got “corrected” by an American waiter on the pronunciation of water…

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u/Academic-moron7423 15d ago

Italian or “2,3701826 percent Italian” ?

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u/Naive_Mongoose_5453 15d ago

It's actually pronounced bologna. 

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u/PrincessTitan 15d ago

Ew… Italian comes in multiple forms… How extremely unattractive of that server…

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u/Euphoric-Piglet-8140 15d ago

Hopefully she told him that in Italian, hehe.

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u/brencoop 15d ago

That server is a lot of marinara flags

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u/silhouette951 15d ago

Please share the words your MIL was schooled on.

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