If you want to be laughed at and rudely corrected, go to Portland, Oregon and mention the "Will-a-MET" river. Sure glad I knew the right way to say it, because I've seen people made out to be total fools and never corrected nicely!

j_999_9, your point is well taken, but I guess you've never ordered champagne in Paris!

And while the Pronunciation Police are on duty:

Please please stop pronouncing "conch" as "conCH". It should be conK.

It takes everything in me not to correct customers on the spot...but does repeating their order using the correct pronunciation mean I'm correcting?

When in doubt, one can always point

My Italian/American friends always say "pro shoot" and often a c is replaced with a g...as in gapigola, or just gapigole

Now, any opinions on gnocchi and bolognese

Marion

j 99 9 : There's a fine line between correct pronunciation, and pretention.

The Par- ee example is the best one, surely you don't go around the US refering to the French capital that way. It's like the old Saturday Night Live sketch where the newscasters overpronouce Nicaragua and nearly choke themselves with it.

If the wait staff is going to say brooshetta....shouldn't they be consistant and and ask if we want a glass of "she-ahntay"

While we're at it, "croissant" is routinely mangled, although I agree it's difficult to pronounce properly -- I'm sure I don't to the French ear. But it's surely not "cress-ant"! The "oi" is, approximately, a "wah" sound, and the "t" should be silent unless you've decided that there are male croissants and female croissantes! (Freud would probably choose the second choice ;-) ).

Back to the original point: it's 'broo-SKAY-tuh', if you really want to know how it's pronounced in Italy.

Annoying post, I know, but I couldn't stand another mispronunciation go by....

(And I swear I'm not one of those souls that rolls their r's with any given chance.)

now that you've figured out bruschetta want to try tagliatelle? LOL!

Out here in the West, we have a lot of Hispanic people.

I've never heard a "North American" call some Hispanics incorrectly in English. "Jesus" is always pronounced "hay-zoos", in my experience.

And, if we are going to Anglicize all foreign words: how is "ciao" pronounced in English?

After having read this thread, I had to laugh during the early news on our local ABC station. They had a segment featuring a chef from Maggiano's. Care to guess what he fixed? And how both he and the anchor woman pronounced it?

Since this is a US thread...let's try Pend Oreille!

Litespeed: We already addressed the "Paree" thing. Doesn't apply to this argument.

On a wonderful food tour of North Boston, I was told that bruschetta was pronounced so that the "ch" was the same as in "chianti" which is a good way to remember. But as almost everyone says it with the softer sound, you do risk feeling silly. I hate when waiters correct me on "gnocchi" and "pinot" and "sauvignon". Sometimes they're right and sometimes wrong, but what is the point of that?

My friend went on a blind date with a guy...and he pronounced the "T" when he ordered merlot. She never went out with him again.

But he was modeling clay for her Suzanne. For shame!

My Dh and I were in Bergdorf's with a another couple, looking at scarf print ties many years ago. My gf pronounced the tie a "Her-mees". The saleswoman haughtily corrected her, "Air-mess". My friend, I guarantee, could be haughtier than the haughtiest Bergdorf salesperson and I'm quite sure she never set foot in that store again though she certainly has the resources to shop to her heart's content there! She felt belittled in front of her friends and Bergdorf lost a customer. What is the point, really and what happened to the "customer is always right"? If it was necessary to do correct her, it could have been done gently, but this salesperson was anything but. My husband did buy one, the hot air balloon print, by the way, but from a different salesperson after we circled the store and returned, not wanting to do anything to further that woman's career. LOL

So how does a waiter "correct" one without being obnoxious? Easy. If I order "brooshetta", he ignores it until he repeats what he's bringing the table. Then he simply says "and an order of broosketta". He's not offensively corrected me, but I've learned (hopefully) the correct way to pronounce it.

Suzanne, better that he ordered merloT instead of white zinfandel. Even if that had been pronounced correctly, she still should have run screaming.

And I still laugh at the time the waitress told us the specials of the evening including a puzzling "chicken pick-a-TAW". I was half way through my dinner, when the light bulb went off --oh, piccata!

I'm with Patrick... Move on!... Get a life!... It's pronounced in Italy with a "k"... and in the US with an "ch". I use the Italian pronunciation... if someone looks at me funny, I just switch. I move on with my life... no harm, no foul.

Well, as they might have said in "Sideways," I will eat brooshetta, but I will not drink %#&! MerLOT.

How about gyro? If I'm not mistaken, the correct pronunciation is year-o (am I mistaken?). I've been corrected pronouncing it this way but have always thought I was correct - maybe I'm not?

A longtime Cincinnati resident and owner of the Cincinnati Reds pronounces Cincinnati like this: Cincinnat-uh. Drives me crazy!

Hi snowrooster, someone started another thread about gyro yesterday. Think it's slid down past 100.