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:
