The Chicago Tribune food section offers this helpful list of how to pronounce ten things whose names get a bit butchered in restaurants.
Pho, of course, is one of the ten. The thing about pho, however, is that even if you say “fuh”, you are still not quite pronouncing it correctly, because it has an intonation that the little diacriticals on the last letter give it: ở This is how it should be said (link goes to an embedded .ogg sound file, you may need to download a codec to get it to play on your computer). I suppose that’s only really necessary if you’re in Vietnam and need to get it right for the locals, but we are being persnickety here, after all.
Don’t even get me started on bruschetta, though. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve had to hear a waitron call it “broo-shett-a”. I have even had a server actually correct me when I said “broo-SKET-ta”. Here’s the scoop, kiddies, they don’t use the letter “K” in Italian for the most part, instead they assign the “K” sound to the dipthong “CH” (and boy am I tickled to use the word “dipthong” in polite company). It’s the French who make “CH” sound like “SH”. So if you want to say it that way, make sure you ask for “brochettes”, not bruschetta.
Oh, and Giada would like to have a word with you about another Italian delicacy:
OMGee, I have been corrected on the B word, too, but I wasn’t confident enough in my knowledge of Italian pronunciation to be anything other than embarrassed about it then. Sheesh, I should have been completely indignant … and now, I am! With pho, on the other hand, I intentionally mispronounce it with non-Asian people because they/we inevitably have no frakking idea what I’m talking about if I don’t. Oh, but one of my FAVORITE stories goes back to a fancy restaurant that used to be in Marblehead and was featured in a well-known VISA commercial in the ’80s. My friend asked what the “BECK-ah-mel” sauce was (having exactly no idea of how to correctly pronounce it, but neither did any of the rest of our party), and the waitron informed him that “the BESH-ah-mel” was whatever the hell pretentious thing it was. (And yes, I actually do know now, btw.) So in this case, my friend really did mispronounce it, but the server was so rude in his effort to correct him that my friend and I still get the giggles every time we see or say the word “bechamel.”
Once, in the Years Before Charlotte, Bridget and I were at a restaurant in New London, NH, and our server was a teenage boy, who was probably brand new to the job. He was a little uncomfortable, but he had his specials written down and proceeded to tell them to us. One dish, he informed us, featured “gor-GAN-zola” cheese. We tried not to laugh, but could not help but smile, and the boy turned beet red. After dinner, we offered the correct pronunciation of “gor-gan-ZOLA” and made sure to tell the hostess (who was probably his mother) what a good job he had done, but to this day Bridget and I say “gor-GAN-zola” to one another.
I think I shared this with you before, but when I was in Rome, two restaurants pronounced that crusty stuff broo-shett-a which really confused me. Maybe I was in French restaurants and didn’t realize it. What the heck are the French doing serving the stuff any way?
Dude, when all the tourists say “broo-shett-a”, you say it they way they do. Money changes EVERYTHING. If you were in France and said something the wrong way, the waiter would just spit on you and walk away.
I’m so not going to order food in France.
It’s okay. In France, even the waiter’s spit tastes good.