The way you said “un caffè, per favore” sounded just like people from São Paulo would say “um café, por favor”. I always downplayed Italian influence on the dialect of São Paulo, but I believe it now.
Living mostly in California, it was fairly easy to take the Spanish pronunciation and transfer it to Italian. And traveling internationally, I've found that pronunciation is more important than the amount of words or phrases you may know. Thanks for your latest Italian lesson!
I learned Spanish in high school. When I went to Italy, the locals were confused by my attempts at Italian. I instinctively used Spanish pronunciation. After I realized I was doing that, I tried to use Italian pronunciation as best I could after that. I still didn't have a good sense of which syllables to stress, but I stopped speaking with a Spanish accent.
You can know an entire language, but if you can't pronounce the words nobody can understand you. Most people have learned some Latin but very few can actually speak it.
@@-haclong2366 you are right, I’ve experienced myself in Japan, I moved there for a year and half after studying the language for some years at university. The first 3 months were a nightmare, I wasn’t able to pronunce words In the proper way (I’m Italian).
Indeed you are right, pronunciation is often more important than the number of words one knows, because sometimes a wrong pronunciation also puts one in an awkward situation because often the other person probably understands a whole other word of what one wants to say.
An Italian walks into an English sandwich shop and asks for a panino. The man behind the counter says “you mean panini?” The Italian says, “no thanks, I’m not THAT hungry.”
Fun fact: in the menu of many "trendy" restaurants you can read things like "Spaghetto al pomodoro" (JUST ONE???), or, even worse, with the stupid article "LO spaghetto..."
I was surprised you haven't mentioned "penne", at least in Czechia people tend to pronounce it with only one "n" which, as far as I know, is very wrong... funny enough, when I asked for "penne" the waiter corrected me if I wanted a "pene". No. I did not want that. I wanted my pasta. Thank you
I laughed very hard when you starting calling for the dogs with cannoli. The hypothetically of it was very amusing in my mind of a bunch of fluffy bois coming to the calling of cannoli. As much as naming, not just one, but mutable dogs cannolo. It's cute.
@@stefanodadamo6809 This is a very difficult topic. eg. How do you pronounce 北京 (Běijīng)? Do you pronounce the tones correctly? If not, why not and shouldn't you?
@@lingred975 I can't, without having studied Chinese in depth as Raffaele/Metatron did. Italian has no tones... Other than the standard raised one for questions, and it involves the entire phrase, not a limited number of homophone monosyllables. Italian pronunciation is much more accessible than Chinese one to the average foreigner. It requires... Very little study indeed.
My name Italo has been pronuounced in so many different ways here in the US 😅 eye-talo ee-talo ei-talo "it's like Italy but with an o at the end" Great video Metatron, complimenti!
@@frankhooper7871i always liked how (some) americans pronounce Italians like that First time i heard it i was like 10 years old playing MOH Airborne and you meet your sargent who gives you a warning "just remember, unlike the eye-ties the germans know how to fight"😂
As an English speaker, we do this a lot with foreign words that we use it seems 😆 Spanish has similar fates in the south USA. As a Spanish speaker, it drives me nuts when people pronounce the Spanish loan words with English pronounciation. As an Italian learner, ill try to be a protector of the proper pronounciation with italian loan words too 😂
Molto divertente! As an American who was fortunate enough to have gone on an exchange between my university and l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in the 1970s I fell in love with your beautiful language. I studied Italian for a year before my trip "là dove il sì suona" and I worked very hard on eliminating, or at least minimizing my American accent, to the point that it became difficult for me to pronounce Italian words or family names in the American fashion, and it lingers until today. I'm afraid my connazionali think I'm being snobbish whenever I use a word borrowed from Italian in English. All of your examples are words that bother me when an American mispronounces them. In the event you revise your list, may I make a pair of suggestions? First, can you please explain the Italian pronunciation of "gli"? It breaks my heart when I hear an Italian-American with a beautiful family name like Gagliardi butchers it (Gag-lee-are-dee). Second, on the topic of famous names, can you explain the pronunciation of Medici? Americans, almost universally, pronounce it with the accent on the penultimate paragraph. Meno male che "pizza" è sempre "pizza."
you're right, a short time ago I saw a video in English on the history of the Medici and the accent was punctually wrong. In common parlance it may be "accepted" but definitely not if you're making a historical documentary.
@@kennethwarner4511 I think it does not matter, when you speak or write another language it's not really important for tourists or foreigners to be 100% correct, if the others can understand what you wanna say. The problem is for YT video teachers when they do big mistakes, as Metatron did show. I heard some Italians with strong regional accents which makes you pronounce words in the wrong manner.
I recall going to Mass at St. Anthony's on Sullivan Street in New York and being puzzled by what I was hearing. Italian? No. Spanish? No. Turns out it was Portuguese!
@@scorpionfiresome3834 Agree 100-percent! 👍🏻 I have no idea how Portuguese words are pronounced whereas EVERY letter in Italian (with very few exceptions) are pronounced. Example? Ciao 🇮🇹 vs. Tchau 🇵🇹 Grazie and Obrigado. 😊
What drives me crazy is an Italian restaurant near where I live is called “IL Davide.” But locals pronounce it like it was French with the accent on the “i” and the final “e” isn’t pronounced at all…even though the article “IL” is clearly Italian. 🤬
Hey Nobel One. I would like you to pay attention on Serbian language. The only word that I mispronounced is Stromboli. I put an accent on "I". Considering that I don't speak Italian at all, I did pretty good. I think that I was able to do it so because, in Serbian language, we have one sound for every letter in our Azbuka or Alphabet (Abeceda as we call it) .We read and write in both Cyrillic and Latin. We have a proverb that says "Write as you speak, read as it is written".
I knew how to pronounce every word correctly, too - except Stromboli. My mother tongue is also similar in a sense that there is a letter for every sound (except for [ŋ] which is spelled with "ng", like in many other languages) and every letter is always pronounced in the same way. So that is probably the reason why pronouncing Italian is pretty easy for me.
@@IkarusKommt You have no idea what the Cyrillic is or any idea about Serbian language. And if you are Bulgarian, that is understandable. I do not expect anything smart from a bulgarian
@@KnightOfSerbia1 Cyrillics is an extended Greek alphabet developed by Clement of Achrydes' scribal office. Vucovica is a mishmash of Cyrillic, Latin and made-up letters which violates the basic principles of Cyrillics and cannot be considered as such. Why get upset about it?
I felt your pain as the name Versace cam up. Because, I am german, and I got the same reaction whenever some English speaker pronunces Porsche. It's not Porsh! And no, neither Porshie! Its Porsche. PorschE! 😜
Starbucks originally has a small size called "Short" followed by a medium size called "Tall" (which had the same diameter as the short but was taller) and then a large size (with a wider diameter) that contained 20 fluid ounces appropriately called Venti. By the time they were well known they had taken the Short off the menu to encourage people to spend more on a tall, but I've heard that you can actually still order a short off of a secret menu.
The only two sizes sold at the original Starbucks were the short (8oz) and tall (12oz). As customers wanted a larger size, the grande (16oz) was added. Because Americans really like to super size things, the venti (20oz) size was added. Shorts are still available, though mostly used for children size hot chocolate or steamers.
I understand the whole singular/plural thing, but if I were to say "cannolo" or "panino" to anyone in English, they would just think I was stupid. Which is unfortunate, since I know that I am in fact not the stupid one who got it wrong.
@@huguesdepayens807 I also know people who pronounce "Capri" wrong in the way he said in the vid and always boast about how they went to Italy as though that means that they are correct about everything Italian. And again, I just have to bite my tongue, because if I correct them, they wouldn't believe me and just call me stupid.
Something really funny happened in Italy a few years ago. I think about 10 years ago the McVeggie sandwich came to Italian McDonald's. Now the spelling of Italian words is, generally speaking, always consistent, with just a few exceptions (extremely rare). So, as a tendency, Italians expect the same in other languages. They know how to pronounce the name 'Maggie' in English. They know it's a hard 'G' sound. So naturally they expected the 'ggie' in McVeggie to match it. And we even had commercials on TV mispronouncing it XD I'm a vegetarian and was really happy with the new sandwich, but refused to take part in the pronunciation madness, and used to call it the right way whenever I was ordering. One second later the cashier going like 'guys, a McVeggie!' still insisting on the hard 'G'. She must've thought I was crazy XD
Don't worry, It happens everywhere. There are a lot of foreign words in Italy that I pronunce in a wrong way on a purpose, because people would not understand or make fun of me. One was Titanic when I came back from UK and my friends laughed for months😅
We Japanese are fortunate to write foreign words in katakana instead of the alphabet, so we call it ブルスケッタ. The fact that Italian and Japanese have some similar pronunciations also plays a part.
This is not completely related but I talk with people from around the globe and when a Portuguese, an American and an Indonesian all told me that they thought Tiramisu was a Japanese dessert because the word sounded Japanese (how?????) it simply left me speechless 😂 Anyway great video as always, I share the same frustrations as you do with certain mispronounced words
I completely uderstand. Japanese doesn’t even have a “ti” syllable. They pronounce tiramisu like “chiramisu”, so thinking that it’s Japanese makes no sense. You can write “ti” in katakana though as ティ which indicates the word is supposed to be pronounced with a T sound but since it’s not a syllable naturally present in Japanese most people pronounce it as “chiramisu”.
As the sibling comment said.. but then again, most people who don't speak Japanese themselves are not aware of the little fact that modern Japanese doesn't have a "ti" sound, and not a "si" sound either - though it used to, hundreds of years ago. So, if you remove that knowledge then Italian and Japanese have something in common, which is a sound system with lots of vowel sounds and in general words don't end in consonants. So "ti-ra-mi-su" looks quite a bit like what a Japanese word could look like, except that "ti" doesn't exist, and the "su" wouldn't be pronounced like that either, in Japanese. But again that would need more specific knowledge about Japanese. Most people only hear the vowel sounds and go from there.
Ackctwalleeeee: the "i" at the end of many Italian surname is a vestigial genitive from latin that means "son of" (also elliptical). Galileo Galilei = Galileo (son of) Galileo, and then it stuck to all the children of the family throughout centuries. But I really like to see it as a plural, as you say, because family is made of many people and not just the father. As an Italian linguist and translator, also from the south, I really love this channel and this content!
I’ve heard it’s Venti because it’s 20 ounces, but in the end, it’s still a dumb thing to call your large size, should’ve just been “Piccolo, Medio, Grande,” it’d be correct and you teach everyone a few new words in a foreign language, win-win
Tha actor Don Amici, winner of an oscar price, had to change his name in Ameche for permitting the right pronunce. As Caponi in Capone, Lucchesi in Loukezy etc. But funny is that in Italy Ameche became french Amesch.
Your English pronunciation is really excellent. As a US native speaker, you have a vaguely foreign accent, but it’s not really recognizable as Italian. You sound like someone who acquired the language very early with a bit of British influence. I’m the same way in Spanish; I have a near-native accent that people from all regions furrow their brows at and ask me where I’m from.
He speaks in an excellent RP English. I am Italian I learned English in the US but I am travelling very often to the UK and I am keen on learning RP. When I am in the UK I am doing fairly well but occasionally when I am speaking to an American I fall back into the American pronunciation. in spite of all my efforts to maintain the English pronunciation.
Love this topic! I’m surprised to see Stromboli make the list (although it is indeed widely mispronounced.) I just didn’t realize how well-known they were. As a native of Philadelphia, I thought it was only something you could find in our area. We Philadelphians can claim the original “Stromboli” (as a food, not the island 😂) created here in the 1950’s by an Italian immigrant in South Philly. He made thin, square pies (similar to pizza in teglia) and decided to try rolling the dough like a giant cigar (think a pizza burrito.) Different than calzone, which is a folded round pie, and is a true Italian creation from Napoli. There are a lot of overly greasy / heavy Stromboli out there, but if done correctly with simple, high quality ingredients, it can be amazing and you can definitely see that it has Italian roots.
I've never mispronounced any of these words. Well, I'm from Austria and when I was a kid my parents and I used to spend at least three weeks in Italy each summer. 🙂
@@casomai Esatto! 😂😂😂 Ma è più economico che pernottare direttamente a Venezia. 🙂 Ma ogni anno andavamo anche al Lago di Garda (anche questo è comodo per visitare Verona).
In English the name for the diacritic of the ñ is "tilde", but I've also seen some authors use "the little wlwlwlwl thing" so you're still safely within the confines of scientific discourse.
Raffaello, quando hai tirato fuori Starbucks mi aspettavo che nella lista finisse anche la parola "Latte"! 🥛 Gran video, quando parti con il "Rant" sei troppo forte. PS: Riguardo a "Bologna" ai vecchi tempi si usava, oggi molto meno, per dire prosciutto se la memoria non mi inganna...
Wait wait wait wait... the final -I in most Italian surnames has nothing to do with "plurality" (in the sense of having large families), otherwise, by the same cannolo/cannoli standard, the surname Rossi should only be used as a collective and every family member of said Rossi family should have the surname Rosso - i.e.: one "Rosso", many "Rossi". Instead, the final -I in many (but not all) Italian surnames, like in Rossi or Urbani, is a remnant of the Latin genitive singular. Urbani is basically a fossilized patronymic derived from a guy who was the son of a certain Urbanus and thus was referred as "Urbani" (of Urbanus). The same happens for many surnames that look as pluralized given names, like Fabrizi, Lorenzi, Alighieri (ever heard of Dante's father, Alighiero Alighieri, that is Alighiero son of Alighiero?), and so on and so forth.
Capri..... There is a famous sugary orange juice in Germany called Capri Sun (that is their modern name, before that were known as Capri Sonne). Every kid loved this juice and as I learned today, there is an Italian island called Capri and that the company ads taught every German kid to pronounce the island in the right and proper way. The guy who made the ads seem to have looked it up. I feel educated now.😁
Sapevo la corretta pronuncia di tutte le parole qui :) Non c'è da stupirsi, visto che ho studiato italiano per 3 anni. Non riesco a scrivere o parlare bene la lingua, ma la pronuncia non è troppo difficile :P
Hello there my good sir, I greatly appreciate it a lot for what you do. I am an American that has been living in Mexico for 11 years now. I speak English, Spanish and Russian. It's funny, I can't understand spoken Italian very well, yet written I can understand about 20% of the context. It's because of my knowledge about the Spanish language.
I've had a waitress at Olive Garden look at me weird and not understanding when I said gnocchi. I had to point it out so she could say "oh ghnoci!". The pain was there.
My mother was a first-generation American. She had a tendency to drop final vowels, e.g.: mozzarell', tagliatell' It was also not unusual for Ma and other Italian-Americans we knew to use "cannoli" as a singular, so "cannolis" was the plural form we were used to hearing.
Sorry, but I'm confused, during my vacation on Capri the Italian tour guide Capri pronounced it in a way we are supposedly not supposed to pronounce it now. Is it possible that this is a dialect difference?
When I go to Italian restaurants the most common errors I see are Capresse instead of Caprese (and people oftenly pronounce it "caprèss", as if it was French) and Rissoto instead of Risotto.
Excellent video as always keep up the good work!, I wanted to ask do the Sicilian speakers the Godfather II sound authentic? (I ask this because I know many of of the actors do not speak Italian or Sicilian in the first place)
Great video, as always. I get about 50% of those words right, most of the time even though I speak very little to no Itialian. Good to hear the proper pronunciation on the other half!
On the Starbucks, I learned from a friend who worked there in university that they do actually make a short coffee, it's just not listed on the menu. He would give us a short regular (American) coffee when he was working and we stopped by to say hi. I think the "vente" is 20 ounces. But I agree the names are all kind of weird. And I'm going to think of "the winds of coffee" from now on, which is pretty awesome, though I'll never order such a large drink.
Yes, back before Starbucks went big in Seattle, most espresso stands would offer Short, Tall and Grande. Starbucks added the Venti and later the Trenta above the Grande.
I and a friend (who lives in Italy) tried to order bruschette (hey, plural) in Singapore.. the guy didn't understand what we meant until we pointed at the menu, and then he said "Oh, brouschedda!"
First, thank you for helping me understand singular vs plural in Italian. However, pet names can be the plural form of a word in America. For example, when I was a child we had a dog named “Peanuts.” There’s also a tendency in English to put the accent on the last syllable with place names since suffixes are used to denote place. Of course when talking about American English the rules don’t usually apply which caused a great deal of childhood trauma as the result of kids mispronouncing my last name.
I was wondering about plurals in the English language. Like the British word trousers. Lets say you want to name your pet after it like in the example with the italian noodles. Would it be grammatically "more correct" to call the pet Trouser or Trousers? I guess the latter. Maybe thats why english speaking people often use plural for names.
@@nostalji93 in Italian too we can say pantalone while the garment is usualli called pantaloni. A pet however we might call him Pantalone, like the traditional character from Commedia dell'Arte. Anyway what noodles? If any mention of spaghetti or long pasta is in the video I must have missed it.
@@OniGarro There aren''t. I just assumed Cannoli are noodles. They clearly aren't. Ty for the correction and sorry for misgendering your pastry.^^ Damn Cannoli look delicous.
@@nostalji93 hope I didn't result rude, it felt important to me trying to point that out. If you want to try delicious, delicious cannoli don't be wrong, head to Sicily and its bars filled with gastronomic wonders! I was also initially "misgendering" this word in your answer as the only gender I implicitly referred to was that of Pantalone, "call him" I wrote as the name whold only fit a male pet.
@@OniGarro No you weren't rude at all. I was afraid I was rude with my ignorance towards Cannoli. There are just so many noodles with italian names I assumed its a kind I don't know. So unless my lack of knowledge wasn't offensive to an Italian, I think we are good :) "misgendering" was just a metaphor to say I used the wrong word. My sorry ass german attempt of humour.^^ I just realised again how melodic italian is. Beautiful language! (This might come across as offensive, I hope it doesn't) I can't say spaghetti in my pseudo italian accent, without intuitively moving my fingertips together. Something that associates italian and this movement of the hand is deeply ingraved in my brain. This is just something odd I just realised.
Oh, I've seen a really cute spelling mistake of "cappucino" and "espresso" shortly after the reunification of Germany in a former East German restaurant. If you think about them having had to learn Russian in school, the mistake may actually come to mind very quickly.... Yep, it was "cappucinow" and "espressow" 😂
While it’s always fun to compare those differences and if someone is learning Italian it’s important to know how Italians pronounce things. However I’d argue that when words are loaned by one language from another, they become a part of that language and can change grammatically and phonetically to suit that language’s own rules. Just like “pasokon” is a Japanese word loaned from English, one cannoli is an English word loaned from Italian. And both are correct.
I agree. "Salami" is one word that is widely used as a singular in my mother tongue, and it is also pronounced differently. One could argue that it is just pronounced wrong, but because it is specifically a singular word and never a plural, it is obviously a loanword and not Italian anymore.
I'm Polish, and all those rules seem very easy and intuitive, especially the double letter reading, 'e' at the end of the word, and difference in plural and single. Now I want to learn, at least the basics, of Italian. Fun fact, in Polish we call italian was differently than other nations do: Italy - Włochy ( the 'ł' is read like englih 'w', and 'ch' is read like the single 'h' as in the word 'hello', just stronger ) and the history of the word goes back to the Celtic migration and the german tribes of that time:)
Vlachy in Czech and Walachei in German. I'm not sure exactly how it is used in Czech (I doubt many people would think of Italy when seeing that word) but in German it is often used to mean "in the middle of nowhere". It also only occurred to me recently that Poles and Czechs have the same word for walnut, orzech włoski / vlašský ořech. But only Poles would associate it with Italy whereas to Czechs it doesn't mean much at all!
I have a good one..I was at a first consultation with a very confident attorney as I was considering hiring him. after his pitch, I proceeded to yell him that , "I'm not sure you're aware, but you mispronounce your last name." His last name was Sciollo. He pronounced it like "Skiolo". He was at a loss for words, at first, then he dug his heals in and told me I was wrong. I asked his how he would pronounce the model car Volkswagen had called the Scirocco..he use a "she" sound for "Sci" . I said that was correct so the Sci in Sciollo would have the same sound . he seemed like I just cut down his family tree .
8:20 To be honest, I am making a bit of a stretch here, but it is very much possible that in the 19th century, when espresso was just invented, a lot of people could've indeed called it expresso (which is basically the Latin form of the same word, and inventors really loved using Latin words, so it is quite possible that a lot of English, French and American engineers, and maybe even some Italian engineers would call it expresso rather than espresso, because they loved Latin).
I believe it's more likely a modern marketing gimmick. American coffee is usually just boiled water poured through a filter in a coffee maker or a pour over. Then they started importing espresso makers to sell an alternative at a higher price, and they used an American pronunciation. Some who were lazy about their pronunciation said it as "expresso" since it looks similar to the word "express."
Espresso means litterally express (like in delivery). We say "corriere espresso" to indicate the delivery guy and "consegna espressa" to say"express delivery". We used to say "caffè espresso" because of the quick way It was extracted and not an italianisation of a NON EXISTENT latin term "ex-pressum" (which if It was to mean "pressed" or "under pressure" should be "a pressura"). That's what I know about It, but I am not an expert in etymology, so take It with a grain of salt.
To explain the Starbucks thing, when Starbucks began as a company, there were two sizes, short and tall. Short is still available for certain hot drinks. Later they introduced a larger size and called it ‘grande’, and then later they added a larger size called ‘venti’ after the number of ounces of liquid the cup holds (20), same with the ‘trenta’ cup introduced years after that, which holds 30 ounces of liquid. Short size drinks went out of fashion simply because Americans prefer bigger portions. By the time Starbucks became popular and went international, the cup sizes were fossilised in their names and now we have these cups which don’t make sense on first glance.
Small correction, although the North American alveolar tap (or flap) resembles a /d/ sound, it's actually an /ɾ/, the same you would hear in Spanish for example (r suave) ex. better [ˈbɛɾɚ] vs caro [ˈkaɾo̞]
But in the word city, I can't hear the ɾ sound, only a fast and soft d sound. Do you think you do the same sound in better and in city for the t letters? I don't think so..😥Otherwise I would hear the word siɾi, the apple assistant in Italian 🤣Insted I heard sidy
@@lucabaga29 In North American English, ''city'' is still being pronounced as an /ɾ/. As a native speaker, if I slow down my Canadian accent and sound out the syllables, it really doesn't sound like a d, though I understand the confusion, before I studied linguistics, I was convinced they were clear d sounds, and most North Americans think so too. My biggest epiphany, though this is a little arcane, is when I realized that the people with a Québec accent in English pronounce all the intervocalic t sounds as a clear d and it sounds off and foreign, if a native English speaker were to pronounce the intervocalic t like a d, they would probably sound like them lol.
@@lucabaga29 hahahaha, ma è importante ricordare que la /t/ intervocalica si trasforma in una r spagnola/italiana, e non è una r gutturale normale, quindi la r di siri non è la stessa che la "r" di better. Aggiungo che c’è un altro suono per la t intervocalica, ossia la "glottal stop", un iato completo, ma unicamente quando la sillaba precedente e questa accenta, ad esempio: latin > 'la-in, lo stesso succede con l’inglese britannico con la parola better, soprattutto nelle regioni settentrionali = (be’ah) Ti auguro una buona giornata!
@@PhilologieRomane Thank you, you are very kind! ;) Yes, about Siri I meant the Italian pronunciation, so Italian r :) So I meant that city (/ˈsɪɾi/) has the same pronunciation as siri in Italian (/ˈsiɾi/) (taking into account only the consonants, because the first i is short and we don't have that sound in Italian). Yes, the glottal stop I am quite capable for latin, and short words... while for important, mountains, Manhattan, etc... I get stuck and can't pronounce all the syllables after ahahah I should practice a bit :) Thanks, you're very nice. All the best dear Florent 😊
It's actually pretty normal for English speakers to use plural forms of words as pet names. Like Bubbles, Marbles, Beans, Pickles, Waffles. So if they do it even with their own language, why not a foreign one where they don't understand the difference between plural and singular :)
Gia. I told a cab driver “ Pagiamo Gia!!” Bc he tried over charging us in airport. lol but I pronounced it “ G E E E A! 😂 hearing it in country and learning it through an app and even live classes is completely different
3:48 In a manhwa I was reading at some point the main character makes a lots of different type of pastry and list them mentally and in this list I see "cannoli". I'm French, but I also happen to have visited Sicily so of course I know about this delicious treat, but when I watch the depiction I get a bit confused: what I see is not cannoli at all but "cannelé" and though one could think it's just fancy French spelling putting their "accent" on every E it can, it is actually not the same item at all. I don't know if it's a mistake by the author or the translator. 5:58 I believe their is a French song with Capri in the lyrics, maybe that's why the French prononciation took over a bit? Just like a famous song mention the "Fujiyama" so most French people call it that even though it's the wrong prononciation of the mountain kanji and should be "Fujisan".
We Canadians pronounce the T like a D a lot of the time, too. 😅 And we also tend to just not pronounce a T at the end of words most of the time because we're lazy with pronunciation. Also, thank you for mentioning the Starbucks thing! It makes absolutely no sense to me either.
I'm portugueses, would love to make a video like this with you Just to se how we pronounce certain words. Also I think it's a vinte because the cup is 20 ounces
Special mention for tagliatelle which non Italians pronounce as “tagh leee a telly” that hurts my ear. I went to a restaurant where we had an Italian in our group and the Dutch waitress insisted on correcting him that it was actually “Brušeda” and not Bruschetta. Final thought, in a hotel in Milano I said “un caffè per favore” and picked up my espresso and walked away. The American behind me parroted “oon caffay pour favoray!” While nodding proudly to me. When he saw the small cup he switched to English and argued that he had ordered a kwaffee and he got this instead. The exasperated lady went into overdrive “tu hai detto un caffè, allora questo è un caffè ☕️ 🤌🤌🤌” such a drama at breakfast
Re. Calzone/Provelone and dropping the final vowel in American English, I believe that is because it is a feature of the Neapolitan dialect/language (Napulitan’) that became standardised in Italian American immigrant communities, even among Italians from other regions, when they mingled in America. So it actually a pronunciation that came from Italy, not one created by English speakers in America.
Loved this. In general all words that contain a GN and GL combination of letters is mispronounced. Another singular/plural mispronunciation is PANINI. Having said this, Americans even mispronounce their own native language, as in: vitamin, vase, missile, versatile, mirror, tomato, etc.
Thr singular forms you spoke of, such as panino and cannolo reminded me of a conversation with my hubby. We frequent a neighborhood Mexican restaurant. The owners Ike when I practice my Spanish. One night I ordered a combo platter and one item was a tamal. My hubby asked what that wasI told him you, the thing in the corn husk and steamed." " Oh a tamale! Why don't you just say that?" " No, when you're speaking Spanish, tamal is the singular of tamales." And he just didn't want to believe that Americans say it wrong. I told him that we Americanize words and they are acceptable speaking amongst ourselves but when you are speaking another language you try to do it right.
Salame is such an interesting example. The German language adopted the word and pronounced it with wrongly so the Germans corrected their mistakes by butchering the word and wrting it as Salami (singular form). This way we are pronouncing it correct.
Another case is "brocchioli" .Around here it is said as "brozhol". In the late 1980's, Gene Burns, a Boston radio talk show host, 10 AM - 2 PM, wkdys, WRKO, 680 AM, who was as I said, a BOSTON host, meaning pretty up there on the intellectual scale got into it. and said that the ethnic Italian he trusted called it "brozkhol" and that's what he would use. I think the explanation is apparant, albeit pretty Grimm. So it might be BOTH "brak-ee-O-li" and "bro-ZHOL", the latter "correct through usage"
That's because Italian-Americans spoke many southern Italian languages that got mixed together and influenced by English, the guy from Boston wasn't wrong because that's how in their community they would say it, but it's not standard Italian.
I feel the pain. 😄 I guess we are lucky in the sense that there are hardly any Hungarian loanwords in English but those few are absolutely butchered. I'm fully with the idea that foreign words are assimilated phonetically by the target language, they become loanwords, and they are not incorrect - just don't use the same pronounciation in their country of origin. I have to admit, the funniest arguments about "what is the correct way of saying" still come from regional variations within the same language.
Yeah, it seems like Italians pronounce gl with the tounge in the same place in the mouth as when pronouncing ng (similar to Spanish ñ, but Spanish don't have the gl sound).
Btw, I am up if you want to share us your experience of living in Japan. Like, what drove you to go and how did you manage to stay for so long. I am also interested in going but I am unsure which is the best way of doing it.
The way you said “un caffè, per favore” sounded just like people from São Paulo would say “um café, por favor”. I always downplayed Italian influence on the dialect of São Paulo, but I believe it now.
Italian: un caffè per favore. Spanish: un café por favor. Saõ Paulo: um café por favor.
@@casomai French: un café s'il vous plaît
Living mostly in California, it was fairly easy to take the Spanish pronunciation and transfer it to Italian. And traveling internationally, I've found that pronunciation is more important than the amount of words or phrases you may know. Thanks for your latest Italian lesson!
I learned Spanish in high school. When I went to Italy, the locals were confused by my attempts at Italian. I instinctively used Spanish pronunciation. After I realized I was doing that, I tried to use Italian pronunciation as best I could after that. I still didn't have a good sense of which syllables to stress, but I stopped speaking with a Spanish accent.
You can know an entire language, but if you can't pronounce the words nobody can understand you. Most people have learned some Latin but very few can actually speak it.
@@-haclong2366 you are right, I’ve experienced myself in Japan, I moved there for a year and half after studying the language for some years at university. The first 3 months were a nightmare, I wasn’t able to pronunce words In the proper way (I’m Italian).
@@-haclong2366Most people???? When. last century?
Indeed you are right, pronunciation is often more important than the number of words one knows, because sometimes a wrong pronunciation also puts one in an awkward situation because often the other person probably understands a whole other word of what one wants to say.
An Italian walks into an English sandwich shop and asks for a panino. The man behind the counter says “you mean panini?” The Italian says, “no thanks, I’m not THAT hungry.”
I used to work in a coffee shop in Berkeley frequented by italians. This exact conversation happened more than once. Also with biscotti.
Fun fact: in the menu of many "trendy" restaurants you can read things like "Spaghetto al pomodoro" (JUST ONE???), or, even worse, with the stupid article "LO spaghetto..."
🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@ferruccioveglio8090 well it's a common way to say also in some Italian dialects. But it refers to just one dish of spaghetti.
@@danielefabbro822 Mmmm, no: in italian dialects you would say DUE spaghetti 🍝
I was surprised you haven't mentioned "penne", at least in Czechia people tend to pronounce it with only one "n" which, as far as I know, is very wrong... funny enough, when I asked for "penne" the waiter corrected me if I wanted a "pene". No. I did not want that. I wanted my pasta. Thank you
To call for pene in an Italian restaurant would have some very remarkable and funny sideeffects.
Pene means feathers in Romanian, so we make sure to write and pronounce penne correctly.
😂😂😂
@@BananLord well in Italy it's dick so be sure to pronounce both n
@@Liam-de4dl funny cuz you have a town called Pula, which means d*ck in Romanian.
I laughed very hard when you starting calling for the dogs with cannoli. The hypothetically of it was very amusing in my mind of a bunch of fluffy bois coming to the calling of cannoli. As much as naming, not just one, but mutable dogs cannolo. It's cute.
I'm still shocked by why the hell do people call their poor dogs "cannolo"
I laughed too.
@@jerrykofiadonu4763. Where is it that people call their dog “Cannolo” ?? Here in Italy I have never heard a dog with the name “Cannolo”. :)
@jerrykofiadonu4763 it can be good name for a miniature Dauchshund.
Metatron Documenting his descent into insanity because people are mispronouncing the words of his Native Tongue
He's fully justified.
@@stefanodadamo6809 This is a very difficult topic. eg. How do you pronounce 北京 (Běijīng)? Do you pronounce the tones correctly? If not, why not and shouldn't you?
I'd love to hear him pronounce hungarian words 😂
@@bigzed7908 he'd get them quite straight.
@@lingred975 I can't, without having studied Chinese in depth as Raffaele/Metatron did. Italian has no tones... Other than the standard raised one for questions, and it involves the entire phrase, not a limited number of homophone monosyllables.
Italian pronunciation is much more accessible than Chinese one to the average foreigner. It requires... Very little study indeed.
My name Italo has been pronuounced in so many different ways here in the US 😅 eye-talo ee-talo ei-talo "it's like Italy but with an o at the end"
Great video Metatron, complimenti!
To be [un]fair, a lot of Americans refer to the language as eye-talian - similar to how they tend to call the countries eye-ran and eye-rak
@@frankhooper7871who tf says eye-talian 💀
@@frankhooper7871 eye eye eye!
@@frankhooper7871i always liked how (some) americans pronounce Italians like that
First time i heard it i was like 10 years old playing MOH Airborne and you meet your sargent who gives you a warning "just remember, unlike the eye-ties the germans know how to fight"😂
I asked my Italian wife which Italian word most mispronounced by non-Italians most infuriates her and she said, "bruschetta"!
She has my full support
I'm a foodie and a bit of an Italophile...and I still get hung up on salami/salame/salumi...sigh.
As an English speaker, we do this a lot with foreign words that we use it seems 😆 Spanish has similar fates in the south USA. As a Spanish speaker, it drives me nuts when people pronounce the Spanish loan words with English pronounciation.
As an Italian learner, ill try to be a protector of the proper pronounciation with italian loan words too 😂
Molto divertente! As an American who was fortunate enough to have gone on an exchange between my university and l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in the 1970s I fell in love with your beautiful language. I studied Italian for a year before my trip "là dove il sì suona" and I worked very hard on eliminating, or at least minimizing my American accent, to the point that it became difficult for me to pronounce Italian words or family names in the American fashion, and it lingers until today. I'm afraid my connazionali think I'm being snobbish whenever I use a word borrowed from Italian in English. All of your examples are words that bother me when an American mispronounces them. In the event you revise your list, may I make a pair of suggestions? First, can you please explain the Italian pronunciation of "gli"? It breaks my heart when I hear an Italian-American with a beautiful family name like Gagliardi butchers it (Gag-lee-are-dee). Second, on the topic of famous names, can you explain the pronunciation of Medici? Americans, almost universally, pronounce it with the accent on the penultimate paragraph. Meno male che "pizza" è sempre "pizza."
Do you mean the english pronunciation "Medìci" which looks like you put the stress on "i" instead of Italian correct "Medíci" ?
@@cobblerstones If I'm following your meaning, then yes
you're right, a short time ago I saw a video in English on the history of the Medici and the accent was punctually wrong. In common parlance it may be "accepted" but definitely not if you're making a historical documentary.
@@elisabettabrambilla3757 Evviva!
@@kennethwarner4511 I think it does not matter, when you speak or write another language it's not really important for tourists or foreigners to be 100% correct, if the others can understand what you wanna say. The problem is for YT video teachers when they do big mistakes, as Metatron did show. I heard some Italians with strong regional accents which makes you pronounce words in the wrong manner.
As a Brazilian who speak Portuguese, I'm amazed how Portuguese pronunciation is similar to Italian
Well the two languages are related.
I recall going to Mass at St. Anthony's on Sullivan Street in New York and being puzzled by what I was hearing. Italian? No. Spanish? No. Turns out it was Portuguese!
And yet Potuguese is utterly unintelligible to us
@@scorpionfiresome3834 Agree 100-percent! 👍🏻 I have no idea how Portuguese words are pronounced whereas EVERY letter in Italian (with very few exceptions) are pronounced. Example? Ciao 🇮🇹 vs. Tchau 🇵🇹 Grazie and Obrigado. 😊
What drives me crazy is an Italian restaurant near where I live is called “IL Davide.” But locals pronounce it like it was French with the accent on the “i” and the final “e” isn’t pronounced at all…even though the article “IL” is clearly Italian. 🤬
As a Spanish speaker, I got all of them right 😆
Though I do struggle with the double consonants like the "TT" in Bruschetta.
just pause before a doble consonant. brusche - pause - tta
Try pronounce it as brus-quet-ta
@@igorjee wrong say it "brusquet - pause - ta"
Yeah, Spanish doesn't have those.
@@igorjeeit’s actually bruschet-ta
Hey Nobel One. I would like you to pay attention on Serbian language. The only word that I mispronounced is Stromboli. I put an accent on "I". Considering that I don't speak Italian at all, I did pretty good. I think that I was able to do it so because, in Serbian language, we have one sound for every letter in our Azbuka or Alphabet (Abeceda as we call it) .We read and write in both Cyrillic and Latin. We have a proverb that says "Write as you speak, read as it is written".
I would love to speak Serbian, I'm working on it, and I know a few things, but I started Italian first, so it gets priority for my focus. 🙂
I knew how to pronounce every word correctly, too - except Stromboli. My mother tongue is also similar in a sense that there is a letter for every sound (except for [ŋ] which is spelled with "ng", like in many other languages) and every letter is always pronounced in the same way. So that is probably the reason why pronouncing Italian is pretty easy for me.
Bulgarians and Russians write in Cyrillic. You write in a mutant alphabet called Vucovica.
@@IkarusKommt You have no idea what the Cyrillic is or any idea about Serbian language. And if you are Bulgarian, that is understandable. I do not expect anything smart from a bulgarian
@@KnightOfSerbia1 Cyrillics is an extended Greek alphabet developed by Clement of Achrydes' scribal office. Vucovica is a mishmash of Cyrillic, Latin and made-up letters which violates the basic principles of Cyrillics and cannot be considered as such. Why get upset about it?
I felt your pain as the name Versace cam up.
Because, I am german, and I got the same reaction whenever some English speaker pronunces Porsche.
It's not Porsh! And no, neither Porshie!
Its Porsche. PorschE! 😜
Totally enjoyable excursion into Italian pronunciation. Do more videos.
Starbucks originally has a small size called "Short" followed by a medium size called "Tall" (which had the same diameter as the short but was taller) and then a large size (with a wider diameter) that contained 20 fluid ounces appropriately called Venti. By the time they were well known they had taken the Short off the menu to encourage people to spend more on a tall, but I've heard that you can actually still order a short off of a secret menu.
The only two sizes sold at the original Starbucks were the short (8oz) and tall (12oz). As customers wanted a larger size, the grande (16oz) was added. Because Americans really like to super size things, the venti (20oz) size was added. Shorts are still available, though mostly used for children size hot chocolate or steamers.
As a Canadian who spoke Spanish since my childhood, I pronounced most of these right.
This rant about Vesace was pure gold 🤣
Grazie mille!
You can always confuse an English barista by asking for 2 cappuccini and a panino.
Underrated comment.
I understand the whole singular/plural thing, but if I were to say "cannolo" or "panino" to anyone in English, they would just think I was stupid. Which is unfortunate, since I know that I am in fact not the stupid one who got it wrong.
Exactly, I'd love to pronounce things how they are natively, but no one will understand me, unfortunately. That's the only thing really stopping me.
@@huguesdepayens807 I also know people who pronounce "Capri" wrong in the way he said in the vid and always boast about how they went to Italy as though that means that they are correct about everything Italian. And again, I just have to bite my tongue, because if I correct them, they wouldn't believe me and just call me stupid.
Something really funny happened in Italy a few years ago.
I think about 10 years ago the McVeggie sandwich came to Italian McDonald's.
Now the spelling of Italian words is, generally speaking, always consistent, with just a few exceptions (extremely rare). So, as a tendency, Italians expect the same in other languages. They know how to pronounce the name 'Maggie' in English. They know it's a hard 'G' sound. So naturally they expected the 'ggie' in McVeggie to match it. And we even had commercials on TV mispronouncing it XD
I'm a vegetarian and was really happy with the new sandwich, but refused to take part in the pronunciation madness, and used to call it the right way whenever I was ordering. One second later the cashier going like 'guys, a McVeggie!' still insisting on the hard 'G'. She must've thought I was crazy XD
Don't worry, It happens everywhere. There are a lot of foreign words in Italy that I pronunce in a wrong way on a purpose, because people would not understand or make fun of me.
One was Titanic when I came back from UK and my friends laughed for months😅
We Japanese are fortunate to write foreign words in katakana instead of the alphabet, so we call it ブルスケッタ. The fact that Italian and Japanese have some similar pronunciations also plays a part.
This is not completely related but I talk with people from around the globe and when a Portuguese, an American and an Indonesian all told me that they thought Tiramisu was a Japanese dessert because the word sounded Japanese (how?????) it simply left me speechless 😂
Anyway great video as always, I share the same frustrations as you do with certain mispronounced words
I completely uderstand. Japanese doesn’t even have a “ti” syllable. They pronounce tiramisu like “chiramisu”, so thinking that it’s Japanese makes no sense. You can write “ti” in katakana though as ティ which indicates the word is supposed to be pronounced with a T sound but since it’s not a syllable naturally present in Japanese most people pronounce it as “chiramisu”.
As the sibling comment said.. but then again, most people who don't speak Japanese themselves are not aware of the little fact that modern Japanese doesn't have a "ti" sound, and not a "si" sound either - though it used to, hundreds of years ago.
So, if you remove that knowledge then Italian and Japanese have something in common, which is a sound system with lots of vowel sounds and in general words don't end in consonants. So "ti-ra-mi-su" looks quite a bit like what a Japanese word could look like, except that "ti" doesn't exist, and the "su" wouldn't be pronounced like that either, in Japanese. But again that would need more specific knowledge about Japanese. Most people only hear the vowel sounds and go from there.
@@mysticpersimmon in portuguese, Ti sounds like Chi. So I totally understand why a brazilian would think it sounds japanese.
Ti isn't even a legal phonological sequence in Japanese, it become chi instead, pronounced like Mandarin Qi.
That's... unbelievable 😂
THANK YOU! I don't even speak Italian and "expresso" annoys the crap outa me! Even if it was an English word it wouldn't be pronounced that way!
Ackctwalleeeee: the "i" at the end of many Italian surname is a vestigial genitive from latin that means "son of" (also elliptical). Galileo Galilei = Galileo (son of) Galileo, and then it stuck to all the children of the family throughout centuries. But I really like to see it as a plural, as you say, because family is made of many people and not just the father.
As an Italian linguist and translator, also from the south, I really love this channel and this content!
I mean, the s in English family names is also originally a genitive and now perceived as a plural
I’ve heard it’s Venti because it’s 20 ounces, but in the end, it’s still a dumb thing to call your large size, should’ve just been “Piccolo, Medio, Grande,” it’d be correct and you teach everyone a few new words in a foreign language, win-win
many Italians from italy say "spaghetti" as "Shpaghetti"..also many people say Platini all together instead of pronouncing each syllable " Pla-ti-ni"
Many napoletani 😄😄😄
Pierogi in Polish is also plural. The singular is pierog and because o, in Polish, has a "coma" above it, it is pronounced pyeroog.
I'm always glad to learn how to pronounce words correctly. Thank you!
Tha actor Don Amici, winner of an oscar price, had to change his name in Ameche for permitting the right pronunce. As Caponi in Capone, Lucchesi in Loukezy etc. But funny is that in Italy Ameche became french Amesch.
The first time I heard someone mispronouncing "spaghetti bolognese", I thought it was a Polish recipe (spaghetti polonaise)
Fun fact: I'm from Bologna and we NEVER eat spaghetti bolognese
Your English pronunciation is really excellent. As a US native speaker, you have a vaguely foreign accent, but it’s not really recognizable as Italian. You sound like someone who acquired the language very early with a bit of British influence. I’m the same way in Spanish; I have a near-native accent that people from all regions furrow their brows at and ask me where I’m from.
He speaks in an excellent RP English. I am Italian I learned English in the US but I am travelling very often to the UK and I am keen on learning RP. When I am in the UK I am doing fairly well but occasionally when I am speaking to an American I fall back into the American pronunciation. in spite of all my efforts to maintain the English pronunciation.
Love this topic! I’m surprised to see Stromboli make the list (although it is indeed widely mispronounced.) I just didn’t realize how well-known they were. As a native of Philadelphia, I thought it was only something you could find in our area. We Philadelphians can claim the original “Stromboli” (as a food, not the island 😂) created here in the 1950’s by an Italian immigrant in South Philly. He made thin, square pies (similar to pizza in teglia) and decided to try rolling the dough like a giant cigar (think a pizza burrito.) Different than calzone, which is a folded round pie, and is a true Italian creation from Napoli. There are a lot of overly greasy / heavy Stromboli out there, but if done correctly with simple, high quality ingredients, it can be amazing and you can definitely see that it has Italian roots.
Stromboli it's a volcano in Italy
I've never mispronounced any of these words. Well, I'm from Austria and when I was a kid my parents and I used to spend at least three weeks in Italy each summer. 🙂
Fammi indovinare, Jesolo.
@@casomai Esatto! 😂😂😂
Ma è più economico che pernottare direttamente a Venezia. 🙂
Ma ogni anno andavamo anche al Lago di Garda (anche questo è comodo per visitare Verona).
@@tubekulose da cittadina veneziana è la pura verità!
@@casomai Certo.
Metatron
no, mi sa che è una battaglia persa 😂😂😂❤
Sei così forte 😊
In English the name for the diacritic of the ñ is "tilde", but I've also seen some authors use "the little wlwlwlwl thing" so you're still safely within the confines of scientific discourse.
Ahahah.😂😂 Anyway in italian is also called tilde.
Llevan tilde español y italiano también. Accento es la intonación tilde el signo gráfico.
Raffaello, quando hai tirato fuori Starbucks mi aspettavo che nella lista finisse anche la parola "Latte"! 🥛 Gran video, quando parti con il "Rant" sei troppo forte.
PS: Riguardo a "Bologna" ai vecchi tempi si usava, oggi molto meno, per dire prosciutto se la memoria non mi inganna...
Bologna era la mortadella, non il prosciutto
Wait wait wait wait... the final -I in most Italian surnames has nothing to do with "plurality" (in the sense of having large families), otherwise, by the same cannolo/cannoli standard, the surname Rossi should only be used as a collective and every family member of said Rossi family should have the surname Rosso - i.e.: one "Rosso", many "Rossi".
Instead, the final -I in many (but not all) Italian surnames, like in Rossi or Urbani, is a remnant of the Latin genitive singular. Urbani is basically a fossilized patronymic derived from a guy who was the son of a certain Urbanus and thus was referred as "Urbani" (of Urbanus). The same happens for many surnames that look as pluralized given names, like Fabrizi, Lorenzi, Alighieri (ever heard of Dante's father, Alighiero Alighieri, that is Alighiero son of Alighiero?), and so on and so forth.
In protest, I order "small" if ever I am at St. Arbucks.
Capri..... There is a famous sugary orange juice in Germany called Capri Sun (that is their modern name, before that were known as Capri Sonne). Every kid loved this juice and as I learned today, there is an Italian island called Capri and that the company ads taught every German kid to pronounce the island in the right and proper way. The guy who made the ads seem to have looked it up. I feel educated now.😁
There's also an ice cream "Capri" by Langnese (Algida's brandname in Germany).
Ah I know capri sun, love that drink here in UK as well!!!
@@mrtrollnator123 But Capri Sonne was better! 😄
Sapevo la corretta pronuncia di tutte le parole qui :) Non c'è da stupirsi, visto che ho studiato italiano per 3 anni. Non riesco a scrivere o parlare bene la lingua, ma la pronuncia non è troppo difficile :P
Beh, sarai contento di sapere che non hai fatto neanche un errore.
Complimenti
Bravo
I totally agree, if you got enough money to buy Versace or other high fashion stuff then you also got enough money for language classes.
I'll be really with you. If I start saying Conolo and panino in America no one will know what I'm talking about.
Well, if you say "conolo" no one will know in Italy too.
Hello there my good sir, I greatly appreciate it a lot for what you do. I am an American that has been living in Mexico for 11 years now. I speak English, Spanish and Russian. It's funny, I can't understand spoken Italian very well, yet written I can understand about 20% of the context. It's because of my knowledge about the Spanish language.
I've had a waitress at Olive Garden look at me weird and not understanding when I said gnocchi. I had to point it out so she could say "oh ghnoci!". The pain was there.
As an American, I always found it strange how we pronounce bologna. I mean, in what universe does gna say “nee.”
One word that comes to mind is "adagio". Many english speakers pronounce it like /adaʒio/, in italian isnt it more like /adadʒo/?
Correct, the "i" is silent. It just indicates, that the "g" is pronounced as a "ʒ".
My mother was a first-generation American. She had a tendency to drop final vowels, e.g.: mozzarell', tagliatell'
It was also not unusual for Ma and other Italian-Americans we knew to use "cannoli" as a singular, so "cannolis" was the plural form we were used to hearing.
Mamma pugliese?
@@ferruccioveglio8090 Da Formia.
Urbani, bellissimo cognome complimenti
Sorry, but I'm confused, during my vacation on Capri the Italian tour guide Capri pronounced it in a way we are supposedly not supposed to pronounce it now. Is it possible that this is a dialect difference?
In my opinion it's the world's most beautiful language and deserves to be treated accordingly.
4:15 when the Trigun OST playlist plays H.T (Trigun opening song) while you're listening to Raf
When I go to Italian restaurants the most common errors I see are Capresse instead of Caprese (and people oftenly pronounce it "caprèss", as if it was French) and Rissoto instead of Risotto.
The main channel is A-Tier, but I particularly love this kind of content!
Sempre complimenti, Dr. Metatron
Excellent video as always keep up the good work!, I wanted to ask do the Sicilian speakers the Godfather II sound authentic? (I ask this because I know many of of the actors do not speak Italian or Sicilian in the first place)
Leave the gun Take the cannoli ruclips.net/video/yHzh0PvMWTI/видео.html
Great video, as always. I get about 50% of those words right, most of the time even though I speak very little to no Itialian. Good to hear the proper pronunciation on the other half!
I enjoy your humor. I mispronounce everything here in the USA. Thank you for educating us !!!
I love the rant ! Rigghfully as so as well. Love it 😂 and I learned a lot thank you!
On the Starbucks, I learned from a friend who worked there in university that they do actually make a short coffee, it's just not listed on the menu. He would give us a short regular (American) coffee when he was working and we stopped by to say hi. I think the "vente" is 20 ounces. But I agree the names are all kind of weird. And I'm going to think of "the winds of coffee" from now on, which is pretty awesome, though I'll never order such a large drink.
Yes, back before Starbucks went big in Seattle, most espresso stands would offer Short, Tall and Grande. Starbucks added the Venti and later the Trenta above the Grande.
*venti. If it's pronounced i, it's spelled i :)
@@bacicinvatteneaca ah yes. I speak Spanish and a little Italian so often I'm trying to speak Italian, Spanish comes out.
Are you crying Metatron?
No, I simply got a BRUSCHETTA stuck in the eye...
I and a friend (who lives in Italy) tried to order bruschette (hey, plural) in Singapore.. the guy didn't understand what we meant until we pointed at the menu, and then he said "Oh, brouschedda!"
This is a gem for the topic Raf, another great work
First, thank you for helping me understand singular vs plural in Italian. However, pet names can be the plural form of a word in America. For example, when I was a child we had a dog named “Peanuts.” There’s also a tendency in English to put the accent on the last syllable with place names since suffixes are used to denote place. Of course when talking about American English the rules don’t usually apply which caused a great deal of childhood trauma as the result of kids mispronouncing my last name.
I was wondering about plurals in the English language. Like the British word trousers. Lets say you want to name your pet after it like in the example with the italian noodles. Would it be grammatically "more correct" to call the pet Trouser or Trousers? I guess the latter. Maybe thats why english speaking people often use plural for names.
@@nostalji93 in Italian too we can say pantalone while the garment is usualli called pantaloni. A pet however we might call him Pantalone, like the traditional character from Commedia dell'Arte. Anyway what noodles? If any mention of spaghetti or long pasta is in the video I must have missed it.
@@OniGarro There aren''t. I just assumed Cannoli are noodles. They clearly aren't. Ty for the correction and sorry for misgendering your pastry.^^
Damn Cannoli look delicous.
@@nostalji93 hope I didn't result rude, it felt important to me trying to point that out. If you want to try delicious, delicious cannoli don't be wrong, head to Sicily and its bars filled with gastronomic wonders! I was also initially "misgendering" this word in your answer as the only gender I implicitly referred to was that of Pantalone, "call him" I wrote as the name whold only fit a male pet.
@@OniGarro No you weren't rude at all. I was afraid I was rude with my ignorance towards Cannoli. There are just so many noodles with italian names I assumed its a kind I don't know. So unless my lack of knowledge wasn't offensive to an Italian, I think we are good :)
"misgendering" was just a metaphor to say I used the wrong word. My sorry ass german attempt of humour.^^
I just realised again how melodic italian is. Beautiful language!
(This might come across as offensive, I hope it doesn't)
I can't say spaghetti in my pseudo italian accent, without intuitively moving my fingertips together. Something that associates italian and this movement of the hand is deeply ingraved in my brain. This is just something odd I just realised.
Oh, I've seen a really cute spelling mistake of "cappucino" and "espresso" shortly after the reunification of Germany in a former East German restaurant. If you think about them having had to learn Russian in school, the mistake may actually come to mind very quickly....
Yep, it was "cappucinow" and "espressow" 😂
Amusing as well as instrructive--thank you. Passion for words is very important!
While it’s always fun to compare those differences and if someone is learning Italian it’s important to know how Italians pronounce things. However I’d argue that when words are loaned by one language from another, they become a part of that language and can change grammatically and phonetically to suit that language’s own rules. Just like “pasokon” is a Japanese word loaned from English, one cannoli is an English word loaned from Italian. And both are correct.
As someone inspired to try and learn a language because of tom scott and metatron. I agree.
what's pasokon?
@@abodieqwerty4678 Personal computer
I agree. "Salami" is one word that is widely used as a singular in my mother tongue, and it is also pronounced differently. One could argue that it is just pronounced wrong, but because it is specifically a singular word and never a plural, it is obviously a loanword and not Italian anymore.
@@richardharrow2513 oh I get it. But to be fair it's different for japanese because you can't write personal computer with japanese characters
I'm Polish, and all those rules seem very easy and intuitive, especially the double letter reading, 'e' at the end of the word, and difference in plural and single. Now I want to learn, at least the basics, of Italian. Fun fact, in Polish we call italian was differently than other nations do:
Italy - Włochy ( the 'ł' is read like englih 'w', and 'ch' is read like the single 'h' as in the word 'hello', just stronger ) and the history of the word goes back to the Celtic migration and the german tribes of that time:)
You basically call Italians Welsh.
Same as Wallachia and Vallonia in French Belgium.
Vlachy in Czech and Walachei in German. I'm not sure exactly how it is used in Czech (I doubt many people would think of Italy when seeing that word) but in German it is often used to mean "in the middle of nowhere". It also only occurred to me recently that Poles and Czechs have the same word for walnut, orzech włoski / vlašský ořech. But only Poles would associate it with Italy whereas to Czechs it doesn't mean much at all!
I have a good one..I was at a first consultation with a very confident attorney as I was considering hiring him. after his pitch, I proceeded to yell him that , "I'm not sure you're aware, but you mispronounce your last name." His last name was Sciollo. He pronounced it like "Skiolo". He was at a loss for words, at first, then he dug his heals in and told me I was wrong. I asked his how he would pronounce the model car Volkswagen had called the Scirocco..he use a "she" sound for "Sci" . I said that was correct so the Sci in Sciollo would have the same sound . he seemed like I just cut down his family tree .
Alternate title: How to annoy your Italian friends, a comprehensive guide.
Venti I think refers to 20 ounces of liquid. It could also mean wind to refer to how bad your breath smells after drinking it.
You have missed the most important (and often mispronounced) Italian word: Lamborghini! 😀
Thank you for the Bologna part, Americans mispronouncing my hometown's name drive me CRAZY.
8:20 To be honest, I am making a bit of a stretch here, but it is very much possible that in the 19th century, when espresso was just invented, a lot of people could've indeed called it expresso (which is basically the Latin form of the same word, and inventors really loved using Latin words, so it is quite possible that a lot of English, French and American engineers, and maybe even some Italian engineers would call it expresso rather than espresso, because they loved Latin).
I believe it's more likely a modern marketing gimmick. American coffee is usually just boiled water poured through a filter in a coffee maker or a pour over. Then they started importing espresso makers to sell an alternative at a higher price, and they used an American pronunciation. Some who were lazy about their pronunciation said it as "expresso" since it looks similar to the word "express."
Espresso means litterally express (like in delivery).
We say "corriere espresso" to indicate the delivery guy and "consegna espressa" to say"express delivery".
We used to say "caffè espresso" because of the quick way It was extracted and not an italianisation of a NON EXISTENT latin term "ex-pressum" (which if It was to mean "pressed" or "under pressure" should be "a pressura").
That's what I know about It, but I am not an expert in etymology, so take It with a grain of salt.
To explain the Starbucks thing, when Starbucks began as a company, there were two sizes, short and tall. Short is still available for certain hot drinks. Later they introduced a larger size and called it ‘grande’, and then later they added a larger size called ‘venti’ after the number of ounces of liquid the cup holds (20), same with the ‘trenta’ cup introduced years after that, which holds 30 ounces of liquid.
Short size drinks went out of fashion simply because Americans prefer bigger portions. By the time Starbucks became popular and went international, the cup sizes were fossilised in their names and now we have these cups which don’t make sense on first glance.
Small correction, although the North American alveolar tap (or flap) resembles a /d/ sound, it's actually an /ɾ/, the same you would hear in Spanish for example (r suave) ex. better [ˈbɛɾɚ] vs caro [ˈkaɾo̞]
But in the word city, I can't hear the ɾ sound, only a fast and soft d sound. Do you think you do the same sound in better and in city for the t letters? I don't think so..😥Otherwise I would hear the word siɾi, the apple assistant in Italian 🤣Insted I heard sidy
@@lucabaga29 In North American English, ''city'' is still being pronounced as an /ɾ/. As a native speaker, if I slow down my Canadian accent and sound out the syllables, it really doesn't sound like a d, though I understand the confusion, before I studied linguistics, I was convinced they were clear d sounds, and most North Americans think so too. My biggest epiphany, though this is a little arcane, is when I realized that the people with a Québec accent in English pronounce all the intervocalic t sounds as a clear d and it sounds off and foreign, if a native English speaker were to pronounce the intervocalic t like a d, they would probably sound like them lol.
@@PhilologieRomane thanks for the clear explanation 😊🇮🇹🙏 so I will pronounce city like Siri, Italian apple assistant 😂😅 (for consonants)
@@lucabaga29 hahahaha, ma è importante ricordare que la /t/ intervocalica si trasforma in una r spagnola/italiana, e non è una r gutturale normale, quindi la r di siri non è la stessa che la "r" di better. Aggiungo che c’è un altro suono per la t intervocalica, ossia la "glottal stop", un iato completo, ma unicamente quando la sillaba precedente e questa accenta, ad esempio: latin > 'la-in, lo stesso succede con l’inglese britannico con la parola better, soprattutto nelle regioni settentrionali = (be’ah)
Ti auguro una buona giornata!
@@PhilologieRomane Thank you, you are very kind! ;)
Yes, about Siri I meant the Italian pronunciation, so Italian r :) So I meant that city (/ˈsɪɾi/) has the same pronunciation as siri in Italian (/ˈsiɾi/) (taking into account only the consonants, because the first i is short and we don't have that sound in Italian).
Yes, the glottal stop I am quite capable for latin, and short words... while for important, mountains, Manhattan, etc... I get stuck and can't pronounce all the syllables after ahahah I should practice a bit :)
Thanks, you're very nice. All the best dear Florent 😊
I agree the starbucks system of sizes make no sense but tall, grande, and venti are respectively 12, 16 and 20 oz. Some also have a trenta for 30 oz
In our defense how often do you only have a cannolo?
Never. I’m lucky if I can stop at 3 lol
It's actually pretty normal for English speakers to use plural forms of words as pet names. Like Bubbles, Marbles, Beans, Pickles, Waffles. So if they do it even with their own language, why not a foreign one where they don't understand the difference between plural and singular :)
Gia. I told a cab driver “ Pagiamo Gia!!” Bc he tried over charging us in airport. lol but I pronounced it “ G E E E A! 😂 hearing it in country and learning it through an app and even live classes is completely different
Italian is tricky but I love the sound of the words spoke properly.
English is very tricky, especially when we compare the phonetics with the spelling. Actually, Italian rivals Spanish with the most simple phonetics.
Grazzie mille.😊
It's called "venti" because it's 20 ounces.
But it's not, unless they changed it.
@@TheRedleg69 According to the Starbucks website, a venti is 20 ounces if it's a hot drink and 24 ounces if it's a cold drink.
Even third world countries use metric nowadays....
@@matmatteo8238 What's the metric unit for measuring how little we care? Because it's exactly zero of those units.
@@matmatteo8238 Except for Liberia and maybe Myanmar... and USA, of course!
3:48 In a manhwa I was reading at some point the main character makes a lots of different type of pastry and list them mentally and in this list I see "cannoli". I'm French, but I also happen to have visited Sicily so of course I know about this delicious treat, but when I watch the depiction I get a bit confused: what I see is not cannoli at all but "cannelé" and though one could think it's just fancy French spelling putting their "accent" on every E it can, it is actually not the same item at all. I don't know if it's a mistake by the author or the translator.
5:58 I believe their is a French song with Capri in the lyrics, maybe that's why the French prononciation took over a bit? Just like a famous song mention the "Fujiyama" so most French people call it that even though it's the wrong prononciation of the mountain kanji and should be "Fujisan".
We Canadians pronounce the T like a D a lot of the time, too. 😅 And we also tend to just not pronounce a T at the end of words most of the time because we're lazy with pronunciation.
Also, thank you for mentioning the Starbucks thing! It makes absolutely no sense to me either.
Will there be another video, about correctly gesticulating with one's hands?
I'm portugueses, would love to make a video like this with you Just to se how we pronounce certain words.
Also I think it's a vinte because the cup is 20 ounces
Scusa la domanda off topic, tu suonavi in una band musicale friulana?
Starbucks has the worst coffee ☕️ ever.burnt beans. Saw one in Firenze..Who would go there when most places in Italia have wonderful coffee
Special mention for tagliatelle which non Italians pronounce as “tagh leee a telly” that hurts my ear.
I went to a restaurant where we had an Italian in our group and the Dutch waitress insisted on correcting him that it was actually “Brušeda” and not Bruschetta.
Final thought, in a hotel in Milano I said “un caffè per favore” and picked up my espresso and walked away. The American behind me parroted “oon caffay pour favoray!” While nodding proudly to me. When he saw the small cup he switched to English and argued that he had ordered a kwaffee and he got this instead. The exasperated lady went into overdrive “tu hai detto un caffè, allora questo è un caffè ☕️ 🤌🤌🤌” such a drama at breakfast
Re. Calzone/Provelone and dropping the final vowel in American English, I believe that is because it is a feature of the Neapolitan dialect/language (Napulitan’) that became standardised in Italian American immigrant communities, even among Italians from other regions, when they mingled in America. So it actually a pronunciation that came from Italy, not one created by English speakers in America.
Somebody toucha my spaghet!
Napoli is not Italia
Loved this. In general all words that contain a GN and GL combination of letters is mispronounced. Another singular/plural mispronunciation is PANINI. Having said this, Americans even mispronounce their own native language, as in: vitamin, vase, missile, versatile, mirror, tomato, etc.
No, originally there was (at Starbucks) a Short, a Tall, and a Grande. And you can still order a Short - 8 ounces.
Thr singular forms you spoke of, such as panino and cannolo reminded me of a conversation with my hubby. We frequent a neighborhood Mexican restaurant. The owners Ike when I practice my Spanish. One night I ordered a combo platter and one item was a tamal. My hubby asked what that wasI told him you, the thing in the corn husk and steamed." " Oh a tamale! Why don't you just say that?"
" No, when you're speaking Spanish, tamal is the singular of tamales."
And he just didn't want to believe that Americans say it wrong. I told him that we Americanize words and they are acceptable speaking amongst ourselves but when you are speaking another language you try to do it right.
In Italy a large peinture on the wall is often called "murales" thet is the plural of "mural"
I think venti is referring to the amount of fluid ounces.
Salame is such an interesting example. The German language adopted the word and pronounced it with wrongly so the Germans corrected their mistakes by butchering the word and wrting it as Salami (singular form). This way we are pronouncing it correct.
I still cant get over that one time I saw an "italian" bakery in Dublin advertise their famous "foccacia". They called it "fkaasha" 💀
Do the same rules apply to Confetti and Biscotti?
Yes. Confetti and Biscotti are words used for plural. Confetto and biscotto are the right words for singular form.
If I'm not mistaken the Starbucks Venti size refers to the numbers of ounces you get for hot drinks aka 20 ounces.
Another case is "brocchioli" .Around here it is said as "brozhol". In the late 1980's, Gene Burns, a Boston radio talk show host, 10 AM - 2 PM, wkdys, WRKO, 680 AM, who was as I said, a BOSTON host, meaning pretty up there on the intellectual scale got into it. and said that the ethnic Italian he trusted called it "brozkhol" and that's what he would use. I think the explanation is apparant, albeit pretty Grimm. So it might be BOTH "brak-ee-O-li" and "bro-ZHOL", the latter "correct through usage"
That's because Italian-Americans spoke many southern Italian languages that got mixed together and influenced by English, the guy from Boston wasn't wrong because that's how in their community they would say it, but it's not standard Italian.
I feel the pain. 😄 I guess we are lucky in the sense that there are hardly any Hungarian loanwords in English but those few are absolutely butchered.
I'm fully with the idea that foreign words are assimilated phonetically by the target language, they become loanwords, and they are not incorrect - just don't use the same pronounciation in their country of origin.
I have to admit, the funniest arguments about "what is the correct way of saying" still come from regional variations within the same language.
Yeah, it seems like Italians pronounce gl with the tounge in the same place in the mouth as when pronouncing ng (similar to Spanish ñ, but Spanish don't have the gl sound).
Btw, I am up if you want to share us your experience of living in Japan. Like, what drove you to go and how did you manage to stay for so long. I am also interested in going but I am unsure which is the best way of doing it.