When you go to a restaurant...

English. Or pronouncing it right, but no accent, if it is run by those who sell their national foods (Italian or French, not much chance with the others)
 
I always pronounce it properly. I find it easy fortunately. If you can't pronounce it, give it a go, I'm sure a lot of waiters/waitresses are used to attempts anyway, besides you can just point at it too whilst giving it a go, it's perfectly normal.
 
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I'd always try to pronounce it how it should be, but hey, I'm a languages student. This has now extended to Chinese, which is proving a little more challenging :D

Doesn't hurt to try, generally. Unless I happen to be eating out with my parents or such, in which case my Dad will fluently burst in to conversation with the waiter in their native language, seemingly whatever it is. Admittedly, that can quite often be English, but hey :p
 
Muban said:
I pronounce it correctly but without the accent.
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me too. i've got an annoying (to others) ability to pronounce something in any roman-character language (french, german, italian etc...) correctly, but my accent is south-african, so it still sounds fairly weird.
 
I tend to stick to certain foods in restaurants so i know how to pronounce them. Otherwise I'd do the same as most and try and pronounce it whilst pointing. It's a bit less ignorant than just pointing!!

My friends and I went out for a Mexican a while back and one of them pronounced the 'j' in 'Fajita'. I'd really struggle if I was the waitress and people kept doing that :D
 
I'm crap at foreign - I can get the pronunciation perfect in my head but when it comes to saying it to a stranger, I'll be all over the place. Which is why even though I could probably get by in French and German, I'll still speak English wherever I go.
 
where i live i dont need to worry about accents because one Italian restaurant the waiters/waitresses are all English and the other there all eastern Europeans
as for Indian i know the names of most of the dishes off by heart :p
 
i do same as what most do attempt to say the wanted dish point if a look of confusion crosses waiters face then except waiters effort to correct me.
 
Triad2000 said:
I'm lame, I try and pronounce the word and point at the item on the menu at the same time.
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Same here.

Anyone else seem to drift into some sort of accent when they are ordering by any chance? Say if you're ordering a chinese, you drift into a chinesey sounding accent? Lol.
 
You blatantly put on the best accent you can, then slap the waiteress on the bum and say 'Grazi!' ;) (if in an Italian of course)
 
Used to work at an italian resturant so i just ask as i sort of know how to pronounce all the meals :)
But in most places i try and if it looks like its going pearshaped i have the menu open for a quick point at the one i want and act stupid
 
does anyone else get the feeling when ordering that they some how owe it to the staff to try and say it since their going to the effort of cooking it, least i can do is try and pronounce it?
 
dustiestrat said:
does anyone else get the feeling when ordering that they some how owe it to the staff to try and say it since their going to the effort of cooking it, least i can do is try and pronounce it?
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At the end though, I'm going to the effort of paying for it which is entirely the reason they put the shop up in the first place. If they don't like people making a mess of ordering then make a better menu with english translation.
 
I had this very question brought up when out for a meal once. We decided it was best to pretend to speak a different foreign language so as to be forgiven for mis pronouncing half english half foreign menu items. If we were in an Italian restaurant use a French accent and so on.

It seemed like a good idea after a bottle of wine but now I'm not so sure :p
 
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