How to pronounce bruschetta in Italian correctly

Bruschetta is easy to make but difficult to pronounce as one woman discovered. Photo / Unsplash

Bruschetta. One doesn’t have to be an expert on Italian cuisine to recognise this appetiser, which is made up of toasted bread, garlic, extra virgin olive oil and, most commonly, tomato and mozzarella.

However, some may be surprised to know just how poorly they’ve been pronouncing the name of the delicious dish.

A viral video shows an Italian man’s passionate response when his American wife pronounces bruschetta the way many English speakers do: bru-sheh-tah.

“I think I’m gonna get the brushetta,” Sarah Mollica says from behind her phone, which is filming her husband Carlo Longo at a restaurant.

“The what?” Longo replies, his brow furrowing as he scans the menu.

Locating bruschetta on the menu he nods and then corrects her pronunciation: “bruschetta”, he says, which sounds like broo-skett-ah.

“Where is the ‘shh’?” he asks, painting out how Italians would pronounce the ‘schett’ as ‘skett’.

As a joke, Mollica persists in her mispronunciation. “It’s still the same, it’s bruschetta,” she says again.

Growing comically frustrated he repeats the correct pronunciation several times with impassioned gestures, then slowly breaks it down for her. “It’s bru-sche-tta”.

“I have a goosebumps, look,” he says, pointing to his forearm, visibly shaken by the poor pronunciation.

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A post shared by Carlo and Sarah (@carloandsarah)

Whether it was Longo’s passionate correction or the surprising lesson in how to pronounce the dish, the video struck a chord online, where it gained more than 9.1 million views on Facebook.

The mispronunciation makes sense if you don’t understand the way Italians pronounce certain letters or groups of letters.

In English, ‘sch’ would typically be pronounced as ‘shh’. However, in Italian, a ‘ch’ is always pronounced as a ‘k’. Therefore, bruschetta should sound like bru-skett-ah.

As for the history of the dish, it originated as a way to eat stale bread so it was not wasted, and is derived from the Roman word ‘buscare’, which means “to toast or roast”.