While in a cooking class in Mexico, Travis from Orlando, Florida, was told by the instructor that the word quesadilla comes a supposed Nahuatl word, quesaditzen. That’s not the case, although many other food words derive from that indigenous...
Cathy from San Antonio, Texas, notes that many Spanish words come from the Nahuatl language, including the words for “tomato,” “sweet potato,” and “avocado,” which are tomate, camote, and aguacate, respectively. The Nahuatl élotl, meaning “a cob of...
On our Facebook group, a listener says he and his son play a game while in the car that involves mispronouncing the names of commercial signage, such as “Kiff-cuh” for KFC, “Goo Dwill” for Goodwill, and “Oh-ficky Duh-paht” for Office Depot. Then...
How would you like to be welcomed to married life by friends and neighbors descending on your home for a noisy celebration, tearing off the labels of all your canned foods and scattering cornflakes in your bed? That tradition has almost died out...
A woman in Puyallup, Washington, disagrees with her husband about the pronunciation of avocado. She pronounces it as if it were spelled alvocado, with an L, but the standard pronunciation is ah-voh-KAH-doh. A small minority of English speakers...
George from Elgin, Illinois, says his sister insists guacamole should rhyme with whack-a-mole (nor the carnival game officially named “Whac-a-Mole”), reserving the more familiar pronunciation for Mexico. Standard English dictionaries give...

