The 20 International Foods Most Commonly Mispronounced by Americans

One of the benefits of traveling and sightseeing – or dining out in a big city or food festival – is the opportunity to try dishes from countries and cultures far removed from your own. Of course, some international dishes have proven popular enough to become daily staples around the world, so you’ll probably be seeing them by now Ciabatta or tzatziki On the menu at your local sandwich shop as if you were at a restaurant in Italy or Greece.

However, the unfortunate pitfall of trying and adopting international foods is that many of us English speakers aren’t quite as confident when it comes to eating their international names as much. And now a new study conducted by the Language Learning website Prebly He revealed the top 20 international foods that are mispronounced among Americans (along with tips on how to pronounce them).

Based on Another recent study Preply implemented in Phenomenon Linguistic anxietythe study authors turned to Google to count the number of times Americans searched for the prompts “how to pronounce (name of food),” “how to say (name of food),” and “pronounce (name of food).” Adding these numbers together, the foods in question were then ranked by the total amount of search volume their tricky pronunciation sparked among Americans.

1. A deep dive into the top 5
2. 20 International Food Names Americans Struggle to Pronounce

A deep dive into the top 5

Gyros

Gyros are a Greek pita bread sandwich, often filled with meat and served with salad, vegetables, and yogurt. As for that name — which the survey found earns 81,000 Google searches each month — no, no. This is not difficult g. What’s even more complicated is that English doesn’t really have a perfect sound equivalent in its original Greek language like this letter g It’s supposed to represent (which is a bit like a cross between “y” and “zh”). According to Merriam-Webster, you can get away with it also “YEE-ro” or “ZHEE-ro”.

Acai

The second food on Preply’s list of mispronunciations—Akaithe super-premium berry used in healthy and extremely popular acai bowls – received 25,000 fewer Google searches each month than first place, with a total of 56,600. However, pronouncing the word is no less difficult, especially because it manages to cram words Three clips down to just four letters: “ah-sah-EE.”

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Fu

Vietnamese meat, rice and noodle broth comes up with an average of 39,000 searches per month on Google pho It was there in English Since the 1930saccording to Merriam-Webster. We may have gotten rid of the original diacritics in our message S (The correct Vietnamese spelling would be phở), but we still kept the Vietnamese pronunciation: pho Doesn’t rhyme with enemybut should be pronounced simply as “fuh” – a bit like the sound to It is cut into a fast-paced conversation.

Worcestershire sauce

British place names are often Notoriously difficult It can be pronounced among non-Brits, of course, but it’s a fact that the English county of Worcestershire is famous for being home to the ever-popular tasting-like sauce that is now found in kitchens and pantries. All over the world It brought its own minefield to English speakers around the world. The trick is not to get bogged down with all 14 letters, because Worcestershire It’s abstract pronounced “WUSS-tuh-shuh” – a pronunciation that earns an average of 34,000 Google searches in the US each month.

Gnocchi

For many English speakers, Italian potato pancakes are similar to pasta pronounced A bit like the word Knock Only with y Added to the end. In the original Italian (and for more globally minded English speakers, for that matter), there is a hidden ‘y’ sound in the middle of this noun as well: Gnocchi It actually looks more like “NYOH-kee” than “NOH-kee,” a fact that earns it more than 33,000 Google searches every month.

20 International Food Names Americans Struggle to Pronounce

Elsewhere on Preply’s list, the rest of the top 10 was made up of Quinoa (“KEEN-wah”) in sixth place, followed by Caprese (“kuh-pri-ze”), Charcuterie (“Shahr-ku-toh-deviation”), Macaron (“mack-uh-ROHN”), Greek above tzatziki (“TSAT-C-K”). It was Italian names that came out on top most often, with eight words in the final list: “besides.” Gnocchi and Caprese Authority, ranked poll focaccia, Bruschetta, Ciabatta, Prosciutto, mascarpone, and Tiramisu In the top 20 overall. See the full list below.