Do you love Italian food? Are you planning to travel to Italy someday? Considering learning how to speak Italian? Do you love eating at the authentic trattoria run by the lovely family from Italy? Would you intentionally use words that are insulting, obscene, suggestive, and downright disgusting to the locals in a foreign country? Here’s the thing. In Italian, the difference between an innocent dish on the menu, and something really vulgar can be minute.

Most English ...

How much would you pay for a bottle of sweet white wine? Tell you what, I certainly would not pay £75 000.00 (close to $118 000)! But I’m guessing that if you are ridiculously solvent, an Extreme Wine Connoisseur, and love the idea of drinking not only the most exclusive dessert wine in the world, but one which is a time capsule from another century, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Someone fitting that description handed over precisely that amount, ...

Hola Muchachos! It’s Cinco de Mayo time. To celebrate Mexican heritage and pride, I’m doing a little round up of Mexican dishes so you can double-check your pronuciation, and make sure you are getting them right. Someone emailed me querying why I don’t have ‘Mexican’ on my site. For those of you who don’t want to ask, Spanish is spoken in Mexico. It is the same language as you speak in Spain, but the pronunciation differs.  I will ...

If English speakers who visit the UK struggle with how to pronounce many of the place-names there, spare a thought for non-English speakers who are struggling with the language as it is. Many place-names are perfectly self-explanatory: Cornwall, Essex, Leeds, Westminster, Hyde Park – all of these spoken as the spelling indicates. Don’t get too comfy with this concept, because unless you’ve grown up or lived in the UK, you are in for a rude awakening. There are ...

My passion in equal quantities is for languages and food. The two are intimately connected, and both reveal so much about the history and culture of a country. A number of years ago, my brother qualified as a chef. I was struck by how much he and his fellow students battled with the pronunciation of the classic French food terms. They were given French classes, but French is a difficult language to learn and pronounce. I majored in ...

Pronunciation is a dead giveaway of so much about a person. Where you come from, how educated you are – how you say things gives people an indication of who you are, whether you like it or not. In the UK there are so many curiosities, pronunciation wise, but I’m going to let you into the insider’s club, and tell you about the pronunciations which even people living in the UK may not know about. Unless you have ...

*The links in this recipe will take you to detailed explanations and audio files of the correct pronunciation of the French words

‘Sauce Hollandaise‘ is the simplest of the ‘butter sauces’, or ‘sauces au beurre‘ – a category of the so-called ‘Mother Sauces’ (Sauces Mères) of Classic French Cuisine. This simple sauce is a warm emulsion of ...

A reader recently asked me to settle a bet she had with her husband – do you  call a two door car a coupe, or a coupé? Well, the answer really depends on whether you speak the Queen’s English, or you live on the other side of the Atlantic. In Europe and the UK, a two door car is most definitely called a coupé.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is ...

Champagne is undoubtably the drink of the elite, and the very word conjures images of wealth, luxury and glamour. This prestigious drink is not for everyday consumption by the masses – the hefty price tag ensures it maintains its exclusivity. What makes it so expensive, and what’s so special about champagne anyway?

The famous experiment

When uberchef Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck set up a stall in ...

Psychologists say that you are never so irritated by people as when you subconsciously know you have the same annoying tendencies they do. Recently I was researching the French drink Lillet for an entry, and I became side-tracked by ‘The Vesper’, a cocktail which James Bond ‘creates’ in Ian Fleming’s  1953 book ‘Casino Royale’. I could not believe how much there is on this drink – the web is littered with an endless back and forth on what ...