Learn how to say 30+ foods that are hard to pronounce

0:00 Hi everyone, this lesson is about hard to pronounce foods.

0:03 Have you ever had that embarrassing situation in a restaurant when you want

0:07 to order something and the waiter comes and you just sort of whisper it quietly,

0:12 or point at the food, because you have no idea how to pronounce it.

0:17 Or, I guess some people just don't order

0:20 that thing because they don't know how to say it.

0:23 In this lesson, I'm going to teach

0:25 you the British English pronunciations of those words,

0:28 and also if you're learning something about IPA or pronunciation in general,

0:33 this lesson will be useful for you.

0:35 So, let's start with staple foods.

0:38 Staple foods are foods that you eat regularly

0:43 and provide you with a lot of your energy requirements.

0:48 These are not regularly eaten foods in England,

0:52 they're not staple foods for most people,

0:55 but in other countries of the world, they're regularly eaten.

0:59 First one: quinoa (keen-wa).

1:02 This word has two pronunciations.

1:05 Some people say "keen-wa", other people say "ki-no-wa", "ki-no-wa".

1:14 Moving on, next we have couscous, "kus-kus", and we have bulgur, "bol-ga".

1:27 Sauces and dips.

1:29 Here is an English food that's hard to pronounce, even among English people,

1:37 and we say Worcestershire,

1:40 "wus-ta-sha"- we try to say "wus-ta-sha" sauce, "wus-ta-sha" sauce.

1:46 But because it's a bit of a mouthful, that pronunciation,

1:49 there is a shorter way to say it, which is just "wus-ta", "wus-ta" sauce.

1:59 Next one: tzatziki, "tsat-see-key".

2:03 Hard for me to pronounce because this kind of pronunciation

2:07 with the t next to the s isn't common in the English language.

2:14 "Tsat-see-key".

2:15 Next, we have taramasalata ("ta-ra-ma-sa-la-ta"), so many syllables in that one.

2:23 Let's have a look at the IPA transcription of the word,

2:30 because this helps us understand the sounds in that word more precisely.

2:37 If you look here, I've spelt it with all these syllables ending in the letter a.

2:47 ta-ra-ma-sa-la-ta.

2:47 But actually, there are quite a few schwa sounds in this word,

2:55 and the schwa sound changes the sound of the a.

2:59 So, we get "ta-ra-ma-sa-la-ta".

3:01 Unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, unstressed.

3:07 "ta-ra-ma-sa-la-ta".

3:08 I just want to add something about the orange and red columns.

3:14 The orange column is the sound of the word

3:18 written out in the easiest way that everybody can understand,

3:22 and the red column is for people who know and understand IPA,

3:28 which is a way to more precisely write down the sounds of words.

3:34 The problem with this is that not everybody understands,

3:37 and the problem with this is that it's not very exact in all cases.

3:42 So, if we look at the word taramasalata,

3:45 it doesn't sound like that when we say it, it sounds like "ta-ra-ma-sa-la-ta,

3:52 and that's because of the schwas in the word,

3:56 but we can't write the unstressed sound in our normal writing like this.

4:03 The next word we have is guacamole.

4:06 I'm saying that in the British pronunciation: "gwak-a-mo-lee",

4:10 whereas Americans have kept or have, maybe not kept,

4:14 maybe have absorbed more of the Mexican influence,

4:17 so they pronounce it in a different way.

4:21 We say "gawk-a-mo-lee", they say "gawk-a-mo-le".

4:23 But in England, this is a much

4:26 more common pronunciation that you'll hear people say.

4:30 We haven't really been eating so much South American

4:34 food here in England for that long, I would say.

4:38 I would say the last eight years, the last ten years,

4:42 the last ten years before it started to get more popular,

4:45 but I think in North America,

4:47 they've been eating it a lot longer and a lot more of it,

4:51 so they can pronounce it more authentically.

4:52 The next one is baba ghanoush, "ba-ba-ga-nush".

4:58 Here again, we have the issue where the way

5:05 that I'm writing this word in the simple

5:09 to understand characters doesn't show us that we

5:13 have a slightly- we have a different sound here.

5:17 This is "ba-be-ga-nush", "ba-ba-ga-nush".

5:19 Now, moving on to the salad course.

5:22 Can I tempt you with a hard-to-pronounce salad?

5:25 Let's start over here with tabbouleh, "ta-boo-lay".

5:30 Next, this is the French pronunciation of this word.

5:36 We might find this pronunciation in the menu of a fancy restaurant,

5:42 rather than, say, the English pronunciation.

5:47 This one is salade niçoise, "sa-lard ni-swarz".

5:53 In this word, we're not saying "salad",

5:57 the second syllable is "lard", sounds longer.

6:02 This is the French pronunciation.

6:05 The next salad we have is Waldorf, ("wall-dorf"),

6:10 wall as in- in your garden, wall,

6:14 or in your house, "wall-dorf, wall-dorf" salad.

6:19 Compare the French pronunciation of "sa-lard"

6:23 to the English pronunciation of salad.

6:27 And the last salad on our menu

6:31 of hard to pronounce salads is Caprese, "ka-pray-zi".

6:35 Next, we have pantry foods.

6:38 These are foods that you keep in your cupboard and you cook with them.

6:46 And because these are unusual foods,

6:49 these are ones that we would see on a restaurant menu in specific dishes.

6:57 Let's start here with aubergine, "oh-ba-zheen".

7:02 You might not recognize this word, especially if you're an American,

7:09 because you call this one "eggplant",

7:13 but over here in England, we say aubergine.

7:16 What stands out about the pronunciation of this word is that it has a "zh, zh".

7:23 This is not a very common sound in English.

7:26 It's also in the next word: courgette, "kor-zhet", "kor-zhet".

7:32 It sounds close to a j, but it's not a j.

7:39 "Kor-zhet, korzhet".

7:40 "Oh-ba-zheen", "oh-ba-zheen", "kor-zhet".

7:41 The next vegetable is a very unusual looking vegetable.

7:54 It's long and it's purple and green and in England,

7:58 that vegetable tends to be eaten as a dessert called rhubarb and custard.

8:06 "Roo-barb", "roo-barb".

8:07 This word is interesting,

8:10 because it has two long vowels in it, roo-barb, oo, ahh, roo-barb.

8:20 Next, we have a vegetable that you might not have heard of before,

8:25 and a vegetable that could possibly not be available in your country.

8:31 This vegetable was, and maybe still is,

8:35 fashionable to eat in restaurants over here in England.

8:41 And we say celeriac, "sa-le-re-ak".

8:44 Let's look at the pronunciation more closely.

8:49 When I write it here,

8:52 I cannot write in a precise way how we really say this word,

8:59 because here in this syllable, we have an "ea",

9:03 this is a diphthong, where two vowel sounds are together in one sound,

9:09 but I don't know how to write that, can't do it.

9:15 So, how this actually sounds is "sa-leah-re-ak", "leah, leah".

9:23 "leah-re-ak".

9:24 Moving on to the Japanese- what are they, bean?

9:29 Japanese bean?

9:30 In our list, we have edamame, "e-da-mar-may".

9:35 And finally, we have lychee, "lie-chi".

9:42 Now, we have French and Italian hard to pronounce food,

9:49 starting with quiche, "keesh", "keesh", "sh, sh".

9:54 Next, this is a hard one to say.

9:58 Hos d'oeuvre?

10:00 How do we say that one?

10:03 Actually, this one is pronounced "or-derv", "or-derv", "or-dev, or-derv".

10:15 Brioche, "bri-osh", "bri-osh", again ending with a "sh" sound, "bri-osh".

10:24 Next, we have a dessert: meringue, "ma-rang".

10:30 This word ends with an "ng", "ma-rang", "ma-rang".

10:35 And next, we have a potato dish called potato dauphinoise, "doe-fin-warz".

10:43 There are two stresses in this word,

10:47 the main stress has two lines under it: doe-fin-warz.

10:55 Moving on to Italian words.

10:57 Many- I'll go this way- many, many people struggle with this one.

11:04 How do we say it?

11:07 We say bruschetta, "bruh-ske-ta".

11:10 Let's look at the IPA: "bruh-ske-ta, bruh-ske-ta".

11:14 Let me know any Italians in the comment section how I did pronouncing this.

11:20 Moving on, we have gnocchi, "nyak-ee".

11:24 If we look- if we look here,

11:31 can you hear that the n joins very quickly with the "yeh" sound?

11:40 "Nyak-ee, nyak-ee".

11:41 That's not a common sound in English,

11:45 so it's quite hard for us to pronounce in the Italian way.

11:49 Many, many people will just say "knock-ee, knock-ee",

11:52 but if you think about it, it doesn't sound as delicious,

11:55 it doesn't really sound like a food you'd like to eat,

11:59 but it does when we add in that "yeh" sound: "nyak-ee, nyak-ee".

12:06 Next, we have tagliatelle, "tal-yuh-tel-ee".

12:10 I'm looking at the IPA on this side: "tal-yuh-tel-ee, tal-yuh-tel-ee".

12:18 Something to note here about IPA transcription is that at the end of a word,

12:27 what would ordinarily be a long vowel, e,

12:32 written with two dots at the end of a word, we often leave off those two dots,

12:41 because it's the same vowel, but there's a subtle difference in length.

12:46 And because it's at the end of the word, we don't give it as long to say it.

12:53 So, that's why at the end of this word,

12:57 I haven't written the two extra dots on the e sound.

13:04 Tal-yuh-tel-ee.

13:05 And finally, I included this one in our lesson

13:08 today because I really like this flavor ice cream,

13:12 but I never ever had any idea how to say it,

13:16 so I always said something like "I'll have a cone of sta-ki-a-tella",

13:20 and I was always embarrassed and tried to hide how I was saying it.

13:27 But for today's lesson, I've found out how to say it,

13:31 and it's stracciatella, "stra-chuch-te-la", "stra-chuch-te-la".

13:35 "Ch, ch", "stra-chuch-te-la".

13:41 And finally, we have Mexican food.

13:43 You were expecting Mexican food.

13:45 Well, it's actually South American food, starting with ceviche, "sa-vee-chay".

13:52 This one is a Peruvian dish, so I've included it.

13:58 No offense, I said that it was all Mexican food.

14:02 It's actually more broadly South American.

14:04 When I've written this one in easy to understand characters,

14:09 I've written "sa-vee-chay",

14:11 but the first syllable has a schwa and instead sounds like "suh",

14:19 "suh-vee-chay", our stress is in the middle of the word.

14:24 Next, we have- this one, we say quesadillas, "ke-sa-dee-uhz",

14:31 two stresses in this word, main stress for "dee", "ke-sa-dee-uhz".

14:41 We have enchiladas, "en-chi-la-duz", our main stress is the "la",

14:49 and we also have a stress at the beginning, but it's not as strong.

14:55 "en-chi-la-duz".

14:56 And our final word here: tortillas.

14:59 Where are they from?

15:00 Are they Mexican, are they Spanish, Spanish?

15:03 I don't know, let me know in the comments.

15:06 Do they eat them all over South America?

15:09 Let me know in the comments if you are the authority on that.

15:13 We say "tor-tee-yuz", "tor-tee-yuz", "yuh, yuz, yuh, yuh, yuz", "tor-tee-yuz".

15:18 So, there you go.

15:20 There are the hard to pronounce foods.

15:24 Thank you for watching and give me a thumbs

15:30 up- thumbs up if you liked the lesson.

15:37 Bye!