I had not originally planned a part three, but as I received an interesting question by e-mail from Andrew I thought other people might find my reply helpful, so I’m publishing it here as a mini-blog.
Andrew asked: “How do you pronounce sch as in bruschetta, please?”
During the time I lived in the U.K. a lot of everyday Italian snacks and drinks such as cappuccino, panini and bruschetta became increasingly popular and yes it did offend my Italian ears to hear and read the strange variety of spellings and pronunciations used! Of course us Italians do the same thing to English words and it has become very ’trendy’ in Italy lately to use terms like fitness, wellness, weekend, shopping and so on, usually with an invisibly vowel (fitnessa, weekenda etc.) attached to the end because Italians find it difficult to pronounce words ending in a consonant!
In England my (English) husband once insisted that I pointed out to the proprietor of a little café that the menu included paninis. Panini is the plural of panino (literally little bread, or sandwich) which meant that the cafe was offering what would be the equivalent in English of sandwicheses! The proprietor took it very well and the next time we visited the cafe we noticed that the menu had been corrected to panini. The funniest example that we saw was chalked up on a pub menu board proudly offering Tiramuso, which in Italian means pull a face! I think what they meant to write was Tiramisù, which means literally tira mi sù, or ‘pull me up’ because it is a sweet indulgent dessert that is meant to be what you would call a ‘pick-me-up’.
Regarding the question: “How do you pronounce sch as in bruschetta, please?” well bruschetta is probably one of the most mispronounced Italian word that I heard used in the U.K.. English people tend to pronounce it like brooshetta and that is where you might get a bit confused. However if you carefully follow the pronunciation rule from my blog, “sc before an i or an e sounds like sh in sheep: e.g. sci, uscita, scelta, in front of a, o, u, or h however sc sounds like sk in skin: e.g. scarpa, scuola, scopa, scherzo“ and of course bruschetta, you will now understand exactly how it should be pronounced. The correct pronunciation is broosketta. And of course don’t forget to roll your r’s!
2 Comments
Mispronunciation often happens when one is not familiar with pronouncing the word in the native tongue. Often one would take a guess. It can be comical as well as tragically insulting. Also, vocal accent plays a major part. I have traveled to different cities and towns where there are Italian neighborhoods. I hear a significant difference between someone speaking Italian in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Philadelphia as well as Pittsburgh. I’m sure it holds true even in different areas of Italy. I am trying to learn Italian. The book and tapes is based on Italian spoken in Rome. I hope that is a good place to start.
Salve Rollando,
What you have to remember is that many of the Italian immigrants to the U.S., the U.K. and other parts of the world came from small towns and villages often in the south of Italy where there was crippling unemployment. Very commonly these immigrants didn’t speak ‘Italian’ but only their own dialect. In fact some of the older people in our village in Tuscany speak mainly dialect and have never studied Italian. Often when immigrants come back to Italy they find that they are also seen as foreigners here because they cannot speak Italian very well. I have met Italian immigrants who have lived in the U.K. for 30 or 40 years and have never learned to speak English very well, yet at the same time it is difficult to communicate with them in Italian because they only know the dialect that they learned in their village when they were younger.
The Italian spoken in Rome has its own particular accent and expressions. It is said that the most ‘correct’ Italian is spoken in Tuscany. However it is important to become familiar with different accents and dialects because that is the reality of the Italian language today.
Buona fortuna con i suoi studi, Serena.