Pronunciation - Top Twenty Mispronounced Food Words

Food, we all love it (or at least I clearly do) and it usually makes for an interesting English lesson as everybody has an opinion and, especially in classes of mixed nationalities, we can often find some interesting cultural differences and similarities.

I've been teaching for a long time now and  the subject of food has come up on countless occasions. It's very noticeable that the same English words cause the same pronunciation problems every time. 
This can be because of silent letters (e.g. "salmon") or because they are pronunciation false friends (there is already a word like this in your language, but it is pronounced differently); e.g. "yoghurt" in some languages.

I recently made this top twenty of the words I often need to correct. Can you pronounce them all perfectly? If you can I think you must have a fantastic level of English!

fruit	vegetables	biscuits	tuna	raspberries
salt	soup (not soap)	pear	oranges	sausages
lettuce	tomato	dessert	chocolate	juice
pies/peas	yoghurt	spinach	salmon	cereal

Later I'll add audio files here so you can listen but until then you can check here: http://www.howjsay.com/
just type the word in and listen. It's a good site as it gives both British and US pronunciation (tomato, most famously).

So this is your task to start this week - make sure you can say all 20 perfectly! What other food or drink words do you find difficult? I'd be interested to hear people's suggestions - I'm sure there are many words which I've forgotten. .

I shall finish with this food-related illustration of the obstinancy of English sometimes. I like the imagined conversation on the right - "we've just discovered this new fruit, what shall we call it?"