pronouncing La Ciccia

[scarmoza]

I've been pronouncing it La Cheet-ZA. Rhymes with pizza. I got the pronunciation from forvo.com - but I realize it could be very wrong.

How do you pronounce it?

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La Ciccia
291 30th Street, San Francisco, CA 94131

[arktos]

Lah-SHEIK-yu would be the Italian, but Sardinians may have some unique pronunciation.

[Robert Lauriston]

No, that would be spelled scichiu. ci is "chee" as in cheese.

"ch" sound:

cia
ce
ci
cio
ciu

"k" sound:

ca
che
chi
co
cu

[inaplasticcup]

I think if it follows the general rules of pronunciation and doesn't belong to some regional dialect outside of the norm, it should be CHEETchyah, the double cc giving it that slightly hard stop at the end of the first syllable.

[tatuaje68]

I was wondering the same thing so I typed into google "how to pronounce La Ciccia"

At the very top of the list was Chowhound.... I should have known :)

[Robert Lauriston]

If there were a Sardo dialect word, it would probably end in u.

[abstractpoet]

Aw geez, and here I've been going around saying La SEE-kee-ya.

Along the same vein, I very much enjoy the "Don't Sound Like a Tool" feature on SFoodie - like this entry on local chefs:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2010...

[Euonymous]

How do you make the audio for this work? It says to click on the Audio icon, but I don't see any Audio icon.

[abstractpoet]

Huh - looks like the audio file isn't up anymore. But anyway, it was helpful to know that Syhabout is pronounced "See-a-boot". =)

[lrealml]

the Sardinian restaurant.
In other words, I haven't been brave enough to try...

[BernalKC]

I just called them, and the woman's voice on their answering machine greeting pronounces it something like "la Chee-Cha". No discernible z or i sounds therein.

[scarmoza]

great work, BernalKC! Solved.

[pauliface]

Also, note, the accent is on the first syllable (chee) and the because there is a double c in there, you hold the middle 'ch' consanant a little longer.
Imagine thinking in terms of musical beats.
If it were a single c, it would be a two-beat word: chee-cha.
But because it's a double c, think three beats, with the tongue resting on the inside of the top teeth/front-of-the-roof-of-your-mouth for that middle beat.
Then, make that middle beat a little shorter than 3 even beats and you've got it.
:-)

[scarmoza]

You should do a pronunciation on forvo
http://www.forvo.com/

[mdg]

Confirming that BernalKC and Pauliface have it exactly right for standard Italian, which will certainly be acceptable. I don't know if there are any Sardinian dialect differences, but given BernalKC's experience I expect not.

Michael

[Malcolm Ruthven]

How does the restaurant owner/staff pronounce it?

[ferret]

According to my Italian teacher, the rule is "cc" followed by "i" or "e" is pronounced "ch", like "cheese". As in Gucci, or focaccia.

[scarmoza]

My S.O. and in-laws pronounce focaccia ---> fo-got-za. (They're Piedmontese.)

So, I guess I'm also wondering how the Sardinians pronounce ciccia.

[grayelf]

La Cheecheeya. But I could be wrong too :-)

[scarmoza]

There's another pronunciation on forvo that's more like: cheech-ah - and I use that one, too.