How to pronounce tricky food names

This is not a guide on how to

pronounce

various

food

names

or potentially challenging words, but rather the first draft of a manifesto on how each of us can choose between conflicting pronunciations and how we can balance for ourselves the occasionally competing goals of intelligibility. and authenticity. and without sounding like a pompous jerk, let's consider each of these goals individually, first an intelligibility, many people would say is the only thing that matters when it comes to any type of communication. Do you understand? If you have a mission accomplished, the enemy can be an enemy. pronunciation of but it's hard to imagine that I could walk into any Viet

names

e joint here in the US and not be immediately understood when ordering pho.

Likewise, if I go to a Greek place and order tzatziki or tzatziki, I'll get what I want. However, if you were to order tea at Zakai, they would probably have no idea what the hell you were talking about and you wouldn't get what you wanted and therefore the pronunciation could be said to be objectively incorrect, at least Vasavi's intelligibility, which I think we would all agree that at least the most important goal is for us to be understood, although there are other considerations such as authenticity, certainly all of these goals are intertwined to some extent, a certain level of authenticity needs to be achieved in order to be understood. , you have to get pretty close to how other people say it if I order bruschetta.

Not only is that a world away from how Italians

pronounce

the delicious antipasto they invented, but it will also probably be unintelligible to any waiter if I order. bruschetta You will probably understand me, but I will be authentic. I think most people in Italy would say something closer to bruschetta and since this basic recipe for grilled bread with something on top comes from Italy, one could argue quite convincingly that bruschetta is therefore the pronunciation authentic and should therefore be favored, but other people may claim authenticity. The United States, where I live, has been home to a huge community of Italian immigrants since the 19th century.

Up to 4 million southern Italians came to the northeastern United States between 1890 and 1920 part of what some scholars identify as the largest voluntary emigration in recorded human history this incredible human wave had many results one of which is me another is Italian American culture a distinct culture in its own right descended from a land across the sea but evolved independently here Italian Americans cook differently than Italians and say words differently. I think they generally say bruschetta or at least some of them certainly, it's rare to hear a second or third generation Italian-American call it bolognese sauce, we say. something like bolognese and in fact the dish the pronunciation describes might not even be the same as what my Italian grandmother from New York called bolognese is basically a very meaty tomato sauce, while the sauce they make in Bologna is It is based on milk and meat and barely has anything. tomato at all, usually just a splash of tomato paste according to most recipes I've read, so who should we be real to?

Well, I think one thing that might help to consider is what version of the dish we're trying to describe. Is it the version here where they pronounced it this way or is it the version here where they pronounced it that way? I have no idea how people in Hunan would pronounce the name of General Tso's chicken. a dish that scholars trace in some incipient form to that Chinese province, but this is an exclusively Chinese-American restaurant dish apparently quite different from anything widely consumed in Hunan, so I would say the authentic pronunciation is Whatever Chinese Americans say, but of course even that is problematic because Chinese Americans are no more monolithic than the Chinese, generally the first big wave of Chinese immigrants in what became Chinatown in Manhattan gave us many of the classic American Chinese dishes and they mostly spoke Cantonese, but then came the good speakers of Fuji and Mandarin. speakers with a million different regional and ethnic subdivisions among them which particular Chinese or Chinese-American person gets to be the one to decide what the authentic pronunciation is.

I don't have a good answer for that, although things become a little clearer when we consider names that are actually, literally owned by specific people or groups of people like this brand, how would you pronounce it? There are no vowels, so it leaves a lot to the imagination, but I know that the real people who own and operate this company pronounce it clicker and it turns out that they are the sponsors of this video and that they are also supporting the phone that I am reading these on scripts I wrote here. This is a universal mount with clicker.

It's a stylish and effective way to hold my phone without leaning further. It's dangerously against something or it's holding it all wobbly in my hand what I'm trying to watch something or have a video call with someone it's stylish it's compact it's convertible it's wireless charging compatible it's drop tested from up to two meters I'll take its Keep that in mind and if you use it as a grip, it can help you hold these phones that are getting more and more absurdly large. Now you can buy the universal mount and attach it to any phone or case, but I have the combo clicker case. and grab here I want the color to be dull enough that it's not tacky to my eyes, but distinct enough that I can tell my phone from my wife's, do us all a favor and get one using my link and code in the description that the clicker offers you. 25% off all products and free shipping on orders over $20 use my coded link in description to get 25% off.

Thanks, click now, here's another mark for us to consider pronunciation. I think most people in Italy would pronounce these tomatoes as something like doughy, no. but this is the brand of a company owned by specific people in real life, it's their name and I think they can authoritatively decide how it's pronounced, how they say it, well let's call them, thanks for calling the passing company. I was a radio guy for many years this is an old trick of the trade you have to know how to pronounce a person's name or the name of a company just call and listen to your outgoing message you need to know the name of a place call a local government authority called County Court or City Hall and just listen to the voicemail, so get it right away anyway they say Pass Dean, no wonder they use an Americanized pronunciation.

The company started in the North End neighborhood of Boston and now they are in Canton Mass, is their name. so I think they decide how we say it, at least in general. I think there's a broader theme emerging here, which is that immigrant communities everywhere have what you might call cultural sovereignty, which I think we should respect. The old country is not the only one. and authenticity doesn't necessarily just mean being authentic to other people, it also means being authentic to yourself, which brings us to the third and final of these three goals we're trying to achieve by choosing different pronunciations for

food

s.

Goal number three is not to do it. He doesn't sound like a pompous jerk. I think you run the risk of sounding like a pompous jerk when you're not authentic to yourself, when you try too hard to sound like someone else, and trying too hard to sound like someone else is, in my opinion, disrespectful to all parties involved. . in fact, most Italians wouldn't say bruschetta either. I guess they would say something like bruschetta, but I sounded like a tool at the time because there are sounds in there that just don't exist in the mainstream American English dialect that I speak. in Rohtak consonants in particular, there are sounds, we don't have the flutter of uh and we don't have the trill or ah, those are just sounds that are not on the menu at this particular place, so to be authentic to other people . and for me, here's the pattern I generally try to follow, let's call it ragout.

The CEA law comes as close as possible to authentic pronunciation by using only the sounds in the native language bruschetta and bruschetta both only use sounds that are available in conventional American English. but the latter is closer to the original Italian, so one could argue that bruschetta is the correct one for me, but again, when there is an established local version of the word in your community or culture, that might be the best option, even if it is really different from the original as if it were American. McDonald's is from America, but I don't get mad when the French call it mcdu, that's what they really say in France. mcdu is very different from the original, but is an established and widely adopted local deviation. or the evolution of the original, it's not about a single person being crazy or making a mistake because they don't know any better, therefore even though it violates the law of ragu CEA, I still wouldn't call it wrong, let's look at another example, remember my The little law is to get as close as possible to the original and only use sounds from your native dialect or plural dialects.

The authentic or at least authentically Greek pronunciation of this food is fine. I don't want to get in trouble again. Wiktionary Judas Judas, so what's going on here? Well, in Greek, this food begins with the Greek letter Gama, which in ancient Greek made a bursting sound, which is probably why it is transliterated to Roman G, but in modern Greek, a gamma is apparently a voiced velar fricative. or a voiced palatal fricative that is not a sound that exists in my native language, so I have two options: I can round it to a gun or I can round it to a yes, gyro or gyro gah and they are the closest sounds. available in my dialect, I've said Giro my entire life and I'm certainly not the only American who does, but if the comments section on this recipe of mine is any indication that apparently more Americans are opting for the euro, which is fine or we could ignore it. ragú complied with the CEA law completely and simply opted for the gyro, the Americanized gyro, and it can be argued that this is a Greek-American developed in this form by Greek immigrants in the United States.

Your sandwich here is filled with strips of cooked ground or pureed lamb meatloaf. on a vertical grill again, if my comments section is any indication that this is not a Giro in Greece, in Greece they apparently make it with whole cuts of pork or chicken, so maybe if we're talking about this we should call it a gyro because It is something different and therefore deserves a different name now my feeling is that the gyroscope has been losing popularity throughout my life, but the language is ours, unless you are talking about a name that someone literally owns, no There is an institutional authority that can access it. saying what is right and what is wrong language is a great continuous act of popular consensus to which we all contribute we are driving this car and we can drive it wherever we want whatever we say is right is right and I am very eager to know what you think which is right, let me know, like I said, this is just the first draft of this manifesto, maybe you and I can put together a second draft together.