Have you ever ever been in a restaurant and seen one thing on the menu that’s tempting to your senses, however you don’t know pronounce it? What do you do? You’ll be able to soar in ft first and provides it a attempt, consonants and vowels be damned or you might level on the menu and hope your server can see what it’s you’re asking for. Or, you possibly can fess up and admit you don’t know say it. All three choices will present the identical outcome, however solely one in every of them is appropriate: be sincere and inform your server you don’t know pronounce it.
There’s nothing unsuitable with not understanding pronounce a phrase. As of Might 2024, the Oxford English Dictionary incorporates over 600,000 phrase types, together with 171,476 phrases which might be in present use. No one might be anticipated to know say all of these. Throw in phrases from different languages when restaurant menus and the chance of a mispronunciation is fairly excessive.
When you do select to go for it and find yourself saying it unsuitable, your server might or might not appropriate you. I as soon as had somebody order the New York stripe steak and somewhat than threat embarrassing them and/or affecting my tip, I simply requested them how they appreciated their stripe steak cooked. This specific buyer was somewhat impolite to me, so I passive-aggressively repeated their mistake greater than as soon as. “And the way is your stripe steak?” “Are you completed along with your stripe steak?” “I hope you loved your stripe steak.”
It’s too dangerous to appropriate a buyer. If I had a greenback for each time somebody pronounced the pollo burrito like “polo,” or the rooster mole enchiladas just like the sauce is constituted of a marsupial as a substitute of 30-plus elements starting from dried chiles to anise and chocolate, I’d be a wealthy man.
As a server, I’ve been on the mispronunciation finish of the stick too. The primary time I ever served a clafoutis, I had no concept say it. The chef instructed me what the particular dessert was and he described it as a basic heat cranberry dessert that’s much like a custard-like cake. He rattled off the identify of it, however by the point I acquired to my first desk my mind referred to as it a “flatooey” and I described it as a gelatinous cake, so I used to be actually killing it.
One man questioned the identify of the dessert and I doubled down on it. “I do know, wild identify for a cake, proper?” Later, once I noticed it written down, I nonetheless didn’t realize it was French and spent the rest of my shift calling it a “claw-footy.” It seemed like I used to be attempting to promote one thing that Granny Clampett cooked down by the cement pond.
If we don’t know pronounce one thing, we shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. A whole lot of occasions, the rationale we don’t know the way one thing is pronounced is as a result of we’ve solely ever learn it and by no means heard it stated out loud. It doesn’t imply we don’t know what it’s. Most of us know say “hors d’oeuvres,” however are you able to think about attempting to say that the primary time in the event you’d by no means heard it earlier than?
If it’s a phrase on the menu that’s in French or Italian, the server will at all times be comfortable to share with you the right pronunciation. My native Italian restaurant is aware of my pronunciation is terrible and can at all times repeat my order two or thrice till I get it proper, hoping I’ll study. Or they not less than faux I’m not mangling their native tongue once I order the malloreddus.
The following time you see one thing on the menu you don’t know pronounce, face it. Ask the way it’s stated and stick with it. Nobody goes to guage you for it. They may solely do this in the event you order the New York stripe steak and you’ve got already been a jerk. And don’t ever ask me say “beef Bourguignon.” I don’t know.