Bruschetta is the Italian bread soaked with olive oil and topped with savory ingredients. But how do you pronounce it? With a k sound or a sh sound? Although there are two widespread pronunciations, because it’s not fully anglicized, bruschetta is best pronounced as broo-SKETT-ah. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Bruschetta Pronunciation”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Monica from Ensenita, California.
Hi, Monica. Welcome.
What can we do for you?
I just want verification, because I think I’m right, but I want you guys to make sure I am.
So I grew up, my family speaks Italian. We always pronounce bruschetta with a K. And I’ve been, you know, everywhere I’ve seen people pronounce it bruschetta, with like a C-H kind of sound. And I even had a waiter correct me at a restaurant, an Italian restaurant. But I always was taught that C-H in Italian has the K sound, like zucchini and chianti. So I just want to verify, am I right or was the waiter who corrected me right?
So we’re talking about this toast dish, B-R-U-S-C-H-E-T-T-A, right?
Yes.
Okay. And you’re Italian.
I am. I grew up speaking Italian, and that was the way I was always taught.
Okay. And you have very firm feelings that it should be bruschetta.
Yes, I do. Very firm.
Okay. This is a good question, Martha. And you want confirmation that is the way to say it in English?
Yes.
Okay. And that’s kind of the crux right there. We know it’s the way to say it in Italian, but the question is, is it the way to say it in English? Is it fully Anglicized yet? And that’s the question that we would have to answer.
Yeah, when you say you’re hearing it in restaurants all over, you mean all over the United States?
Yeah, I mean, pretty much every Italian restaurant nowadays has it on their menu.
Yeah.
Right. Everybody pronounces, you know, a lot of people pronounce it Buschetta. And it just makes me crazy.
-huh. But when you go to Italy, you hear it otherwise. In Italy, it’s Buschetta. It’s always been Buschetta. And it comes from the CH, you know, because we don’t say zucchini.
Right. We don’t say Zichini.
No, we don’t. And in English, we say macchiato. We don’t say machiato. We say gnocchi instead of nashi, right?
Gnocchi.
Yeah. Most Americans don’t do the ñ. But chiaroscuro is another one where we say the k sound, right, with the C-H in the vowel. For some reason, though, people want to make this word bruschetta into bruschetta so it conforms to say the S-C-H in schlep or schmuck or schnoz.
Schlock. I don’t think that they think it’s from Yiddish, but for some reason they want it to match that pronunciation pattern, which is really interesting. I think I’m going to agree with you, Monica, that this word has not been fully anglicized yet, and that retaining the Italian pronunciation is a good idea. I mean, I wouldn’t personally come down hard on people for it, but I think with food words, there’s a certain conservation of history where we retain the roots and the nuance and the origins because it’s cooking, because we tend to go back to the original culture and re-import ideas, re-import language pertaining to food and cooking in the process. So I think in this case, I could see bruschetta being a really good choice, probably the better choice. It should be more like the SCH in school or scheme or the American pronunciation of schedule. And I think if people think of those SCHs, then they won’t feel like they need to turn into the shh sound.
Yeah.
Monica, I am going to side with you on this. And I would say in general, it’s better to side with the people who make the food than with the people who eat it or serve it.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Because if you watch cooking shows, everybody who makes this dish or has somebody on their show making this says bruschetta. People in the cooking world say bruschetta, right? But somewhere between the kitchen and the table, there’s a reinterpretation happening.
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s too bad, right? I mean, bruschetta, when I hear it, it just takes me back to Italy.
Yeah.
That’s a nice feeling. I think phonetically it is a nicer sounding word than bruschetta. Bruschetta sounds like something you do when you’ve made a mistake on the floor. You spilled something. Bruschetta sounds like something I want to eat.
What?
Bruschetta sounds like what you would say?
What you would sweep up.
Oh.
Bring us your pronunciation disputes. We’d love to talk about them.
