Pho·net′i·cal·ly speaking: Examining the proper pronunciation of our favorite cocktail terms

I think this is an important and long overdo thread. I hear bartenders and industry professionals pronounce rums, liqueurs, mixers, and other bar jargon entirely different than the way I think is correct. Rather than assuming I know best, which I probably don't, I'd like to open this up to debate/discussion so we could finally get to the bottom of this quandary.

I'll make a list of terms here and once a consensus has been made as to what the correct phonetic pronunciation is, I will edit this post to reflect that. Here's a start:

Clement
Cointreau
Curacao
Cynar
Demerara
Falernum
Herbsaint
Maraschino
Orgeat
Pernod

I know there are plenty more I'm not thinking of, so chime in if there's anything else you want figured out.

[ Edited by: mikehooker 2016-05-11 14:18 ]

I'll start with a few I'm fairly certain are correct...

Orgeat: Either oar-zsa (like zsa zsa gabor) or oar-zsat, not oar-gheet

Pernod: Purr-no

Curacao: Cure-uh-sow

Clement: I say cluh-mont. Often hear cluh-ment

Falernum: fuh-LAIR-num

Cointreau = kwon-troh

Maraschino: MAR-a-SKEE-no

Cynar: CHI-nar

On 2016-05-11 14:26, mikehooker wrote:
I'll start with a few I'm fairly certain are correct...

Pernod: Purr-no

I could be wrong, but I think it's Pair-no

well, I found a good resource here to prove my point: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pernod and http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/pk_ipa.htm

but the phonetic symbols don't translate into tiki central type.

[ Edited by: JenTiki 2016-05-11 14:37 ]

[ Edited by: JenTiki 2016-05-11 14:48 ]

On 2016-05-11 14:37, JenTiki wrote:

On 2016-05-11 14:26, mikehooker wrote:
I'll start with a few I'm fairly certain are correct...

Pernod: Purr-no

....I think it's Pair-no

Awesome, thanks for the correction. That's what I was hoping to get out of this thread. Let's keep it going folks!

Demerara - I've always said "Dem-err-ARE-ah". But, now that I think about it, I wonder if it's not "dem-err-AIR-ah"?

On 2016-05-12 17:35, finky099 wrote:
Demerara - I've always said "Dem-err-ARE-ah". But, now that I think about it, I wonder if it's not "dem-err-AIR-ah"?

Exactly. I've always said "are" but recently heard a couple people say "air" which sounds weird to me. But is it right???

Orgeat I think is pronounced as French, so the T is silent.

Orzhay

Falernum is either FAL - ur - num or fa - LAIR - num.

"Mai-Kai: History & Mystery of the Iconic Tiki Restaurant" the book

[ Edited by: Swanky 2016-05-13 12:35 ]

[ Edited by: Swanky 2016-05-13 12:37 ]

On 2016-05-13 05:54, Swanky wrote:

Falernum is either fal - ur - num or fal -air - num with the air accented.

Hmmm. I used to say fal-ur-num but started going with fuh-lair-num which is close to your second one but with the L coming on the second syllable instead of the first.

I often hear a lot of pronunciations of Creme de Cacao. I am pretty sure it's KREM deh KA-kow. Someone correct me if I'm wrong...I am Canadian eh, so....

On 2016-05-13 09:28, mikehooker wrote:

On 2016-05-13 05:54, Swanky wrote:

Falernum is either fal - ur - num or fal -air - num with the air accented.

Hmmm. I used to say fal-ur-num but started going with fuh-lair-num which is close to your second one but with the L coming on the second syllable instead of the first.

Yep. Amending my post to fa - LAIR - num

On 2016-05-12 17:35, finky099 wrote:
Demerara - I've always said "Dem-err-ARE-ah". But, now that I think about it, I wonder if it's not "dem-err-AIR-ah"?

Or Dem-uh-rare-uh

I'm with Swanky on fa - LAIR - num. Dem-uh-RARE-uh:- now that I see it in "writing" this feel more correct. I think I must unconsciously use both "Dem-err-ARE-uh" and "Dem-uh-RARE-uh." I think both are used, but which is technically the right pronunciation?

The additional challenge for us is that there may be both an anglicized pronunciation, and a "native tongue" pronunciation for these terms.

My French friend laughed at me when I said "Orzhay" (apparently this is something the ancient Romans were fond of). She says it should be pronounced Orzh-Ahh.

I'll have to try her on Clement.

On 2016-05-13 19:18, AceExplorer wrote:
The additional challenge for us is that there may be both an anglicized pronunciation, and a "native tongue" pronunciation for these terms.

Agreed. It's a former British colony, and the Brits just love to Anglicize foreign words. From Wikipedia:

The name "Demerara" comes from a variant of the Arawak word "Immenary" or "Dumaruni" which means "river of the letter wood".

Now, how do the Arawak pronounce it?

Clément - "Klumont" with a very soft "t" at the end. To be clear, pronunciation is NOT "kloomont" but "klumont" where the "u" sounds like the "u" in "drug" or "smug."

My source:
On Friday, 5/20/2016, I ran into and spoke with Kurt Rogers, the local brand ambassador for Rhum Clément and asked for his confirmation. He told me that he learned the correct pronunciation when he visited the distillery as part of his brand ambassador onboarding and training.

Kurt is also one of the partners/owners of Flask & Cannon tiki bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Here is a pic I snapped of Kurt showing the new limited edition street-art adorned bottle of Rhum Clément VSOP Rhum Agricole Vieux. It's good stuff! Only 30,000 bottles were made.

On 2016-05-23 11:08, AceExplorer wrote:

Kurt is also one of the partners/owners of Flask & Cannon tiki bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Based on their facebook page (there doesn't seem to be a website), it appears the only thing tiki about Flask & Cannon is the drinks. Has anyone been there? It's not in Critiki.

On 2016-05-23 12:36, JenTiki wrote:
Based on their facebook page (there doesn't seem to be a website), it appears the only thing tiki about Flask & Cannon is the drinks. Has anyone been there? It's not in Critiki.

Jen, I have also heard this, but have not been there yet. There are several articles indexed by Google about the place, and they call it a tiki bar. But to what extent they have built out the place in some semblance of tiki remains to be seen. I have plans to visit Flask And Cannon in the near future with the intention of creating an entry in Locating Tiki (if appropriate) and also in Critiki. I'll also take photos. I asked Kurt what drives their bar, and what their vision is, and recall that his responses were drink-centric with big emphasis on quality. I've heard of many tiki bars with crappy drinks, and what we have here may be the exact opposite --- less emphasis on tiki theming with emphasis on great cocktails. I'm looking forward to visiting, and I have high expectations drink-wise.

Another example of a local (to me) non-tiki bar with a mean tiki streak well-ingrained is The Ice Plant in St. Augustine. Definitely a non-tiki venue, but they have a killer commitment to, and enthusiasm for, tiki cocktails. (They are ranked by some in the top 200 bars in the US) They have in the past hosted a weekly Tiki Tuesday, and they have several of Jeff Berry's books behind the bar. They also have an excellent rum collection, make their own syrups from scratch, and employ outstanding bartenders, one of whom is the brand ambassador for Rhum Barbancourt and who will be at this year's Hukilau.

Let's see how long it takes me to make the rounds... My home bar continues to be a source of much fun, magic, and mirth. This has cut into my out-and-about exploration of local bars.

Flask and Cannon fit more into the "Florida tiki" bar category than what we around here in TC would call a tiki bar. They do have a strong commitment to great drinks. And they are going to be helping out making cocktails at this year's Hukilau.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVcbasIb8lQ

Man, I loved that commercial when I was a kid!!

On 2016-05-23 12:36, JenTiki wrote:

On 2016-05-23 11:08, AceExplorer wrote:

Kurt is also one of the partners/owners of Flask & Cannon tiki bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Based on their facebook page (there doesn't seem to be a website), it appears the only thing tiki about Flask & Cannon is the drinks. Has anyone been there? It's not in Critiki.

Went to Flask & Cannon in November. Drinks were excellent, including a killer "klu-mont" Ti' Punch. The only thing overly Tiki about the place was this custom mug, a two-sided mug that I was told was carved in the likeness of the co-owners.

As for the original thread topic, I also pronounced orgeat as "or-zhay" for a long time assuming that is how it would be pronounced in French. Once I heard Jeff Berry pronounce as "or-zhat" I followed suit. Ditto for fuh-LAIR-num.

Yes, I have heard that Orgeat is pronounced - Or-Zet. I am pretty sure that the T is not silent, at least all the times I have heard it pronounced.

Every time I've heard it pronounced by a French person,someone who speaks the language fuently, or someone who asked someone who works for the French companies who've been making it for decades, the T is either very soft or completely silent. And it's a French word, so I'm inclined to believe them.

Well, if the T in Clement is pronounced, seems like the same deal with Orgeat to me? Everytime I have heard Clement pronounced the T is not silent, soft but not silent. Seems like Ace has officially found (IMO) that the T in Clement IS pronounced.

On 2016-05-23 11:08, AceExplorer wrote:

Clément - "Klumont" with a very soft "t" at the end. To be clear, pronunciation is NOT "kloomont" but "klumont" where the "u" sounds like the "u" in "drug" or "smug."

My source:
On Friday, 5/20/2016, I ran into and spoke with Kurt Rogers, the local brand ambassador for Rhum Clément and asked for his confirmation. He told me that he learned the correct pronunciation when he visited the distillery as part of his brand ambassador onboarding and training.

Kurt is also one of the partners/owners of Flask & Cannon tiki bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Here is a pic I snapped of Kurt showing the new limited edition street-art adorned bottle of Rhum Clément VSOP Rhum Agricole Vieux. It's good stuff! Only 30,000 bottles were made.

[ Edited by: lunavideogames 2016-05-26 12:01 ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teTQQuJx3sg

Well, I'm going with the Martin Cate pronunciations which don't have the T in either Orgeat or Clement. Pretty sure he got both pronunciations directly from the makers of those products. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Here are a couple of links to similar questions on pronunciation...

http://www.homewetbar.com/blog/how-to-pronounce-curacao-and-liquor-names

http://www.liquor.com/slideshows/10-liquor-terms-youre-mispronouncing/11/#gs.zeoMKOQ

Also on the Pernod question, Per-No seems more correct with the youtube logic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdC6_XyN7ys

Although both could seemingly be correct.

Jen I am not saying I am 100%, this is just a discussion so that we can get as close to correct as possible. Seems like we have mixed sources all over the internet giving us different opinions on pronunciation, so it may be a difficult task.

Here is a link to Torani's official page where they say - Say what!? It's pronounced OHR-ZHAT (but you already knew that).
http://shop.torani.com/Almond-Orgeat-Syrup/p/TOR-362450&c=Torani@Syrups

Jen, where did you get your source for Martin's take? Are you sure there was no soft T?

[ Edited by: lunavideogames 2016-05-26 13:54 ]

Jen, where did you get your source for Martin's take? Are you sure there was no soft T?

Well, Martin is my friend. I have drunk over 500 rums at his bar and have spent many hours listening to him talk about rum and mai tais and have heard both words (Orgeat and Clement) come directly from his mouth several times. He also used an image similar to this to illustrate the Orgeat pronunciation at a Tiki Oasis symposium a few years back:

You can also hear it directly from his mouth at the 1:00 mark in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZUYP1gn-fY&feature=youtu.be

[ Edited by: JenTiki 2016-05-26 13:12 ]

If any of you will be attending The Hukilau this year, a number of good spiritists (heh) will be there and will be able to comment on some of these questions. Ed Hamilton, Martin Cate, Jeff Berry, among others. Maybe I'll run around and ask these folks the same set of question and see what they say and then report results here.

I think agreeing to disagree is a good approach since there may be multiple takes on these by multiple knowledgeable people. We know that various cultures and languages modify their pronunciations based on their own home country's approaches to various letter combinations. For example, we anglicize a lot of stuff, and others do the same with their pronunciations. The silent vs. non-silent "t" is an example of that.

Fun stuff, eh? Nerdy, but fun.

Seems like everyone is friends with Martin, he is a likable guy. Down here in SD, the bartenders that are going to be tending at Martin's new bar pronounce Clement with a soft T. I know that some have even gone to Martinique to sample rums first hand.

I will be the first to admit that French is my WORST language, so I would butcher any French names even if I knew the correct way to say them. I wonder if it is a different dialect in Martinique though? I would assume for Martinique to be isolated far from France that they wouldn't speak French in the exact same way as in France. I mean we can all agree that Americans and Europeans to not speak English the same, I wonder if we are just debating what is correct in different regions of the world? There may be no correct answer if it is pronounced correctly in two different ways in two different places...

Ace, that would be a great idea. It would be fun to see what others think, I wonder if they will be able to agree on a couple???

On 2016-05-26 13:43, AceExplorer wrote:
If any of you will be attending The Hukilau this year, a number of good spiritists (heh) will be there and will be able to comment on some of these questions. Ed Hamilton, Martin Cate, Jeff Berry, among others. Maybe I'll run around and ask these folks the same set of question and see what they say and then report results here.

Can we get video of each of them saying the same words? And since that soft "T" is sometimes so soft it's hard to hear, we could ask them to specify whether or not they believe those words to have a soft or silent T at the end. Tell them it's "research."

On 2016-05-26 14:12, lunavideogames wrote:

I wonder if it is a different dialect in Martinique though? I would assume for Martinique to be isolated far from France that they wouldn't speak French in the exact same way as in France. I mean we can all agree that Americans and Europeans to not speak English the same, I wonder if we are just debating what is correct in different regions of the world? There may be no correct answer if it is pronounced correctly in two different ways in two different places...

This sums it up perfectly Treg.

I was born in Australia but both my parents are Hungarian and i have spoken Hungarian my whole life. In high school we had both French and German lessons and my German teacher told me early on that i would do well in the class because i had very good pronunciation and that is because i can roll my "R's", which is something that surprisingly most people just cannot do.

When people ask me how to say something in Hungarian and/or get me to teach them how to say a particular English word (yes, they are usually curse words) in Hungarian, the thing that i find is that because vowels in pretty much all European languages are pronounced differently and westerners are not used to using/saying them that way, so when they repeat the word back to me it just doesn't sound right.

Most of the time i have to think of a word in English that phonetically sounds the same as the word being translated and then tell the person to say it that way but replace letter X with letter Y and they should get very close. For example, "Hogy vagy?" is "How are you?".

Obviously the 'O' and the 'A' are going to sound different but the 'GY' in both words comes out sounding the same. Now at the moment i cannot thing of an English word that phonetically sounds the same as "Hogy" (this is because of what i mentioned above about vowels being pronuounced in a different way in European language) but i can say that if you take the English word "podge", replace the P with the V and say it exactly the same way, then you would have pronounced the word "vagy" perfectly. So podge/vodge=vagy, but trying that with hodge/hogy doesn't work. I cannot even begin to think about how to type what the 'ho' part sounds like that would make sense. You would need to hear me actually say it.

And just to comment on what this actual thread is about, i'm going to say with 100% certainty that Pernod is indeed pronounced as Per-No. But i'm also going to say that Pair-No is far likely to be far more accurate. Per-No is how a westerner would say it. Pair-No is how a European would say it, but they would also 'roll' the R and at the same time it would sound almost silent, like the T in orgeat. It wouldn't be a harsh R. Again, it is impossible to describe that sound in type. You'd need to actually hear it being said in person.

I called my first cat Pernod because when i was trying to think of a name for him i was just getting into cocktails and had read about and was fascinated by absinth(e) (which at the time was really only available in the U.K.). Learning about absinth(e) and all the liquers that are classed as a pastis, i was reading how those types of spirits 'louche', or go cloudy. And the cat was gray. Haha.

Anyway, not long after he had been christened i came across a very cool advertisment in a magazine for Pernod (which i know i still have somewhere but unfortunately couldn't find doing a Google search) in which the letter D from the logo had 'fallen' off the page and the caption read, "In France/French?, we drop the D". So if an actual advertisment for the product tells you how you say it, then i'm going to have to go with what they say as being correct.

[ Edited by: swizzle 2016-05-26 20:34 ]

I think I figured out the pronunciation we can all agree on: al•mond sy•rup!

:)

On 2016-05-28 15:42, Sunny&Rummy wrote:
I think I figured out the pronunciation we can all agree on: al•mond sy•rup!

:)

But is it: Al•moond sy•rup or awl•mund sy•rup? :wink:

Except that some people say ã-mund (using a short "a" as in "as" or "plan"), rather than awl-mund. I don't trust those people.

Surprising that nobody's taken a crack at Herbsaint yet.

One answer is that "Herb Saint" is a phonetic Anglicization of "Absinthe," and should therefore be pronounced the same: "ab-SENT" (with the initial "a" pronounced the same as in "had.") You can hear the proper pronunciation in this recording of Victor Herbert's Absinthe Frappé from 1930.

The other, easier answer is that since it is an Anglicization and a brand name it should be pronounced as written. Personally, I'm in favor of the former.

On 2016-05-26 14:29, JenTiki wrote:

On 2016-05-26 13:43, AceExplorer wrote:
If any of you will be attending The Hukilau this year, a number of good spiritists (heh) will be there and will be able to comment on some of these questions. Ed Hamilton, Martin Cate, Jeff Berry, among others. Maybe I'll run around and ask these folks the same set of question and see what they say and then report results here.

Can we get video of each of them saying the same words? And since that soft "T" is sometimes so soft it's hard to hear, we could ask them to specify whether or not they believe those words to have a soft or silent T at the end. Tell them it's "research."

This can and should be done. Would be quite entertaining and educational cuz I'm certain the experts won't all be in agreement.

On 2016-05-31 13:53, mikehooker wrote:

On 2016-05-26 14:29, JenTiki wrote:

On 2016-05-26 13:43, AceExplorer wrote:
If any of you will be attending The Hukilau this year, a number of good spiritists (heh) will be there and will be able to comment on some of these questions. Ed Hamilton, Martin Cate, Jeff Berry, among others. Maybe I'll run around and ask these folks the same set of question and see what they say and then report results here.

Can we get video of each of them saying the same words? And since that soft "T" is sometimes so soft it's hard to hear, we could ask them to specify whether or not they believe those words to have a soft or silent T at the end. Tell them it's "research."

This can and should be done. Would be quite entertaining and educational cuz I'm certain the experts won't all be in agreement.

Jeff, Martin, Brian Miller, Paul McGee, and the owner/head bartender of Brooklyn's Fort Defiance will all be in the same room mixing drinks. Maybe we can have the Orgeat Pronounciation Throwdown right there!

On 2016-06-01 12:09, Sunny&Rummy wrote:

Jeff, Martin, Brian Miller, Paul McGee, and the owner/head bartender of Brooklyn's Fort Defiance will all be in the same room mixing drinks. Maybe we can have the Orgeat Pronounciation Throwdown right there!

For cereal, ya'll need to make it happen! Maybe bring a list of a few other terms we still haven't been able to agree on as well. Would make a handy Youtube vid for ours and generations to come.

From Martin's book:

Anyone get the experts on tape going through our list?!

See folks! I wasn't making this sh*t up!