There are hundreds of pasta varieties and some are tricky to pronounce. Now e-learning platform Preply has collated the most common mispronounced pasta names and how they should be pronounced.
Its research reveals gnocchi is the most mispronounced pasta in the world, with an average of 153,000 people searching for the pronunciation guidance each year. Gnocchi, which translates into English as ‘a knot in wood, is a word that perplexes many. The correct way to say it is ‘nyohk-kee’.
In second place is spaghetti, the pronunciation of which is searched by 101,460 people annually. Spaghetti translates into English as ‘thin string’, and is correctly pronounced ‘spuh-get-tee’.
Rounding out the top three is penne with 33,890 annual searches. This pasta is translated in English as ‘pen’ or ‘feather’ and is correctly pronounced ‘pehn-neh’.
Other commonly mispronounced pastas include: vermicelli [ver-me-chel-lee], tagliatelle [tah-lyah-tell-eh] and lasagne [lah-zahn-yay].
Preply says: “The majority of pasta names originate from Italian which has its unique pronunciation rules and sounds that might be unfamiliar to non-Italian speakers.
“Some pasta names contain combinations of letters and sounds that may not exist in other languages. For example, the Italian ‘gn’ in ‘gnocchi’ is pronounced as a soft “ny” sound, which is not common in English. Italian words often have silent letters, which can be confusing for non-Italian speakers. For instance, the ‘h’ in ‘spaghetti’ is silent.
For the full list of mispronounced pastas, go to Preply. Are you guilty of any of those pronunciations?
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