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.
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”.
