I’m starting to think this guy lives in Macon, Georgia

Title: how to pronounce tricky food names Adam: this is not a guide on how to pronounce various potentially challenging food names

"May I have a croissant?" "Uh do you mean a KHWASSON?!"

As a French, we don't pronounce McDo as "Mac Doo". The 'o' is pronouced in a similar way as in "let's go". Just wanted to clarify, because the way Adam pronounced it sounded super weird.

This is the higher level cultural distinction that I need more of in my life. I feel like you get either side of the scale of your video in most discussions of language and culture. On one end, you get people who say it’s splitting hairs to discuss the differentiations of the pronunciations of Gyro. On the other end, you get people talking to 100-year-old grandmother’s from Greece as an unyielding authority on the singular correct pronunciation of Gyro, as if they’ve tracked down and solved an unanswered mystery. Adam, I appreciate the middle line you found with this content. You are educating viewers on various cultural nuances while refusing to declare any one of these cultures as the supreme owner of any one word. I think that’s a really nuanced and well thought out take, and I feel like I walked away from this video learning a new outlook on food pronunciation and culture. Thank you

I'm from Texas. I pronounce tortilla like Tor-TEA-yah. My girlfriend is from New Jersey. She pronounces it like Tor-TILL-ah. It drives me insane.

Can I just point out that the "made-up" example at the beginning is totally supposed to be "white wine"

"Worcestershire sauce" - I always go with "british fish sauce"

I just purposefully mispronounce every cooking-related word so that people think it's a joke to hide the fact that I don't know how to pronounce a lot of words.

There's that and people pronouncing "tortilla" with an L sound.

"I don't wanna sound pompous" *names a law after himself* EDIT: Holy hell none of you seem to get that this is a joke. I don't actually think he's pompous. Congrats to everyone trying to make me seem dumb, you played yourselves

Ragusea's Law: Exists* Bilingual people: *confused screaming

"There is no institutional authority that gets to say what is right and what is wrong" *Laughs in French Academy*

French people don't say "Macdew", but more something like "mac dough", a short phonetic version of Macdonald. Source: Am french

level -1 pronunciation: Facebook mums saying "merci" in the Italian restaurant

This cooking channel is slowing becoming a philosophy channel. Eventually we’ll be discussing the existential problems of the universe. Slowly, but surely.

Adam's goal for pronunciation: don't sound like a tool Seconds later: Ragusea's Law Jk

Adam once again with the smoothest transition into the sponsor of day, silky as butter my friend

"There is no institutional authority that dictates how we speak language" Real Academia Española: Allow us to introduce ourselves.

I mean I call "salad dressing" "veg sauce" so I've pretty much ascended beyond even being able to discuss food with anybody.

“There is no institutional authority that dictates how we speak language”, L’academie Française: “allow me to introduce myself”

There hasn’t been a “shocking secret” recipe in ages. I’m scared for when it happens

when I worked at Wendy's someone asked me for a side of juh-LAP-a-nose. (jalapenos) I was completely floored

"We don't have the flap," almost immediately flaps t in 'that're'

Adam literally has the smoothest ad transitions I've seen xD

French people don't pronounce it "McDoo", it's more "McDough"

My way of pronouncing names: If I am in Japan, try my best to pronounce it the way the Japanese do, even if I cannot do it perfectly. At least I tried my best effort.

Honestly Adam, I am a bit hungover right now, and I decided to watch a few vids before starting on my uni work. I cannot stress how much I value your channel. Videos like this are just great, thank you for teaching me to cook - helping my family and making my friends happy - and thank you for creating just great quality informative videos.

We got it boys, a thumbnail of Adam Ragusea that has a "bruh" on it

I think it's tough when you are bi-lingual/cultural. It feels weird trying to skirt around "sounding like a tool" when you really just want to say something the way you know it.

Workouts look to be going well! Those biceps are popping out of that sweater!

Okay, can we all agree that this was the smoothest ad transition ever made, by a KZfaqr who's already known for them? Jesus Ragusea, that was greased silk.

College humor does an awesome video called "that guy who over pronounces words" or something like that. It's great.

McDonald's also embraces being called Maccas in australia, the app is even called "mymaccas"

I was doomed from the start. The first computer "game" I played was a thesaurus that would pronounce words on a click, had occasional pictures like a lion that would roar on click, & had an extensive & descriptive content.

Adam this is easily my favorite video of yours, and I love most of your videos. I'm a massive language nerd and your approach to this is truly excellent. I've never seen someone describe my own opinions to me and put words to my gut feelings so succinctly. Excellent, EXCELLENT work! For reference, I say something like "euro" or "yeero," I say "brushetta," and I say "bolo-nay-zay" or "bolo-naze." Born and raised in southwest Ohio :)

I find Ragusea's law comes quite naturally to me living in Finland. Foreign (mostly english) media, product and company names are everywhere to the point where you develop an innate feel for how they are pronounced "in finnish", just like you do for native words, except with a different ruleset.

Adam: I need something to hold up my phone *grabs a yam*

I love the way how balanced your words are.

There is an approach you have to cooking that's really refreshing to see. There is no way this doesn't translate through your life. A form of jeet-kun-do even. People in general can learn a lot from this channel therefore not exclusive to cooking. Keep it up Adam !

I believe the French pronounciation of “McDo” has a shorter “o”: “Mac-Doh”.

“Kinowa” Me, an intellectual: *Kinwa*

Thank you, this addressed some of my concerns I had about different brand names, and it was done with sufficient nuance. Really, good video.

I am reminded of a non-food-related example that my mother came up against with a friend she had for a while. During the 90s (I was a teen then) Mum became friends with a woman who joined our church, maybe a few good years younger, divorced with two pre-teen sons. But she was a Victorian and Victoria has a few dialect differences to other states, including a pronunciation of "castle" as closer to "kessel" than "car-sl" that NSW favours. Why is this significant? We were living in NSW and both she and Mum had plenty to do with our church's single people's club (for widows and divorcees) and one of the bigger branches of it was the Newcastle branch. FYI, Newcastle is a city north of Sydney, one of the bigger NSW cities, used too be a metal refining centre, had an earthquake in... '89? I think? As Mum held, calling Newcastle "New-kessel" to a resident's face would be insulting, because they call it "New-car-sl". So I think that fits into your paradigm of "Do people own it?" because as Mum held, and I agree, residents have first rights on how the name of their town or city is pronounced. I also think the second string is how state news broadcasts call it, in the case of a city like Mackay, which can be called the way it looks, but I most often hear it called in rhyme with "eye" on the second syllable, on QLD evening TV news.

I was just showing my father how great of a cook you were! He just followed you!

"One of which... is ME!" What a plot twist.

As both a huge language nerd and a foodie, this video greatly pleases me. Kudos, Mr. Ragusea.

McDonalds is commonly referred to here in Australia as "Maccas" - so much so that Australian McDonalds stores and their Australian web site use that as well. I have one for you, I've noticed that people in the United States of America pronounce "herb" as "erb", dropping the H entirely. When asked, the common response is that it's a french word and thus they attempt to use french pronunciation, which apparently also drops the H. But here in Australia, and I believe at least in some regions of the United Kingdom, it's pronounced with the H, kind of like "Her-b". I know I have always pronounced it with the H, as does everyone around me in Australia. It may be a french loanword, but we are speaking English, and more specifically here we are using our Australian English language dialect rules, shaped by their own unique evolution and influences - from a later "version" of English from the late 1700s until about the 1960s directly from the UK, but also coloured by waves of immigration from what is now Germany with German speakers (producing the "Barossa German" dialect of German predominantly spoken in the Barossa Valley region of South Australia) and influencing the dialect of English spoken in the South Australian capital city of Adelaide to this day, which has a distinct sound which is noticeably closer to the pronunciation of words in German. I believe (and I could be wrong, as I'm no expert), at least in Australia, this German influence has had an impact upon how we pronounce some words - such as "herb", where we tend to use more of the German language pronunciation rules, where letters are more likely to not be silent - at least from my limited Deutsch sprache. Which is correct, with or without the H? Well, as much as it sounds "odd" to me to hear it without the H, I understand that it sounds equally as odd to people to hear the H if they're not used to it - so in a way, both are correct in their own regions. It is my understanding that this is how languages evolve - old English diverged in this way from the other North Sea Germanic languages, one of which went on to become modern German, with a number of changes occuring in both languages over time as they drifted apart, to the point that the two only share a few mutually intelligble words.

1:00 when he said „teezesikai“ I felt that

Can we take a moment to appreciate how comfortable and expressive Adam is on camera? While other KZfaqrs are either monotonous or over-expressive, Adam is able to talk about literally anything while keeping our attention through raw writing and speaking skill. Probably comes from his journalism background.

In France "McDo" is pronounced more like "Mac-Doh" rather than micdoo.

People are really out here pronouncing La Croix as "la kwah"

An addendum to Raguseas Law: Just look it up. For example, there's so many people that complain about not knowing how to pronounce "worcestershire" but at the same time are unwilling to do a quick Google search for the correct way to pronounce it. It literally takes less than 10 seconds and it's actually not hard to say at all if you just listen to someone say it correctly.

lol i feel i have taken part in the creation of this one

A shift from [g] (the in English ) to [j] (the in English ) is actually not unique to the growth from ancient to modern Greek. It's an instance of "palatalization", which is the tendency to move the place your tongue goes while speaking to more often pass through the center-most region (namely, near the hard palate) because that tends to happen any time you move from a sound at one end off the mouth to a sound at the other end. Many parts of Anglo-Saxon also got palatalized as they grew into Modern English.

Wow this has to be one of the smoothest transitions you-NEY! Anyone has ever made. Well done, sir.

he definitely made this bc of everyone roasting his pronunciation of gyro in that video edit: oop just got to the part of the video where he mentions it lmao

Yeahhhh French people do not say "McDoo", lmao. It's "McDo", with a "do" like in "do re mi" (similar to "dough").

Great job on this video, big fan. I hope to see more of these types of videos in the future between your usuals. Don't let the lower view count discourage you from making more of these!

This has always been interesting to me. I'm from South Dakota, and the capitol city is called Pierre. It is named after a Frenchman, but we pronounce it like "pier." I used to think that everyone around here is wrong because they don't say it like the French name, but I realized that language is pretty malleable

When faced with a tough question like, “How do I pronounce *blank*?”, just remember WWTBD. What would the brits do?

This channel has changed sooooo much since I subscribed!. It’s so much more interesting and interactive! Keep up the great work Adam!

thanks again Mr. Ragusea, I enjoy your videos

I once worked around small groups of Italians that flew over here for work. They would constantly talk among each other while working. The enunciation and patter is definitely unique.

Damn, i was waiting for "Thüringer Klöße".

Your ad transitions are so smooth, I often replay them just to witness their brilliance again.

I think it's cool what sponsors you decide to choose

I absolutely agree with your point here. I'm also a 3rd Generation Italian-American. I got a much better sense of just how different Italian-American is from Italian food and culture when I had the opportunity to visit the old country. While the food in Italy was amazing, it was very different from what I was used to at home. Furthermore, I even got told that I pronounce my own last name wrong. The way that my family said my last name has been slowly "Americanized" over the generations, and when I went to Italy, people would correct me and tell me how it should be pronounced in Italian. But, back home, I still use the Americanized pronunciation of my last name. I'm not really an Italian, I'm an Italian-American anyways, it's who I identify with more strongly than anything else. Maybe even switch that around to "American Italian" to really highlight that I'm an American first.

"That's a made-up word!" "All words are made up!"

Gordon Ramsay be like: SHÅLOTS

Where I live in Canada we don’t really say gyros at all, we call it a donair (dough-Nair). And just in case you were wondering: donair poutine.... so good!

Your attitude to food translates pretty well to linguistics too :) I'd just challenge the idea that company names or product names would be exempt from language users doing whatever the heck they want. Speech sounds in use can't be copyrighted

I learned how to say Italian dishes from JoJo part 5

Using this video as a guide, could you show us how you'd pronounce certain dishes? I imagine you'd have to account for history, culture, and present pronunciations but it'd be real fun! Especially if it can turn into a teaching moment for your kids: maybe get them on camera and see how they'd choose to say words, whatever your family'd be comfortable with.

“Ragusea’s law” 😊 is about the best way to handle this topic regardless of where you live on this planet! Respect.

hey i really love your videos! I love how informative and well thought out and researched they are, you clearly put in your work. just to nitpick one thing though, American English does have a tap/flap sound, it's in words like butter and ladder, that tiny "d" sound in the middle.

11:13 ''There is no institutional authority that gets to say what is right and what is wrong!'' - Laughs in Académie française

This is tough on the other side of the Chef's Counter too. I love drawing influence from other cultures when designing menus, but there's a certain expectation of knowledge, including correct pronunciation, when someone is paying you a decent chunk of change to make their meal.

Actually-- American English does have flap, usually wherever you see "tt" (Butter, etc), also words like "water".

this really helps us to make a beautiful food vlog. thank you so much for your amazing tricks. 😊😊😍😍

polish people: pierogi any existing life in milky way: pIeRoGiS

Damn that new kitchen is looking really dope

I think Adam has my favorite segues into sponsor segments, they almost always either catch me off guard or make me chuckle, always so well tied in to the video in general. I really appreciate that--I know sponsors and ads are going to happen, may as well be amused :)

This is incredible, 3 days ago i finished a paper on authenticity in food coining your video on chillies lol

hi adam

Why would I do this when I could just mispronounce everything and make people irrationally angry?

Ive thought of all the social rafications of different pronounciations too. Glad to know there was someone else who thought about. I agree with most ur point good job

Love how you think about these things

That was the smoothest transition to an ad that i have ever seen!

Added complication: I took too many years of Japanese in HS and college. I can't say ramen without flapping that R. My HS teacher would come out of her retirement to slap me upside the head (Really). I think we have an obligation to at least try, especially if we know better. I won't hold it against anyone for saying Ramen wrong, but you're the tool if you roll your eyes if I say it right.

Such a smooth sponsor plug, Adam!

fantastic case-thanks for the discount

"Tee-zat-zih-ky." DAMN IT, ADAM! LMAO.

Damn that sponsor transition was so smooth I was caught off guard.

Most well rounded food channel on KZfaq ✊🏼

I'm a native french speaker but I have a very good level of american english, and people are sometimes surprised that I pronounce english words with a french pronunciation when I speak french, and I prononce french words with an american pronunciation when I speak english. It's both because I want people to understand me, and also because I don't want to sound like a tool! And my brain and mouth can't change that fast between two different accents

"WaitWain" I see what you did there....

When I was in Italy for 2 years the bar keep would always call it "BrewSketah" This was in Gaeta though.

I really really enjoy when you just talk. I've watched many internet cooking shows so far, but you're the host that interests me as a person. Interesting discussion btw, I defend intelligibility over everything, as a trillingual, the only thing I care is being understood

4:45 That segway was so smooth I didn't even notice it was a segway and tried to search up "clckr"