Let’s set the scene. You’re at an Indian restaurant and against your better judgment, you decide to order a chicken vindaloo, extra hot because you’re feeling wild.

But water isn’t enough to quell the fiery heat emitting your mouth. So you call the waiter over and order a mango lassi. That’ll do the trick.

One mango lassi, he’ll repeat back. But notice the pronunciation. It’s ‘lussi’ and not, as most people say, lassie, like the dog.

hello white people these two items are not pronounced the same way. i am sorry we spelled it "lassi" instead of "lussi" but please, you have to stop, i am begging you. pic.twitter.com/U2Tq2AaLVP — ahmed ali akbar (@radbrowndads) June 4, 2018

In an age where we’re constantly told that we’re doing things wrong like showering or drinking coffee, Ahmed Ali Akbar tells us that we’ve been saying lassi all wrong.




If you’re a fan of the South Asian drink which is available at most Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants, you might want to nail it before you go for your next curry.

Ahmed has kindly taken to Twitter to educate the masses and admit his frustrations at decades of hearing mispronunciations.

He even posted video tutorials telling folks the correct way to say it in case they still read it as lassie. It rhymes with fussy, he wisely told the Twitterverse.

so! lassi 101! lassi is rhymes with ‘fussy,’ not with celebrity dog name (credit @nycplayer). the ‘s’ comes at end of the first syllable as well as the beginning of second. take a listen, class! with your help, we can kill lassie in a generation. proud of all my eager students pic.twitter.com/MxKvUSGGmr — ahmed ali akbar (@radbrowndads) June 5, 2018

But of course, South Asian countries have different regional accents and Ahmed admitted his own pronunciations were tinged with his Western upbringing.

‘I’m sure there are regional variances in pronunciation and even mine is inflected with being a diaspora kid – but any improvement we make will be better than making it sound like a literal dog drink,’ he wrote.

The video has instigated a discussion about other mispronunciations, like Punjab. While we don’t really have a problem saying it in the UK, Ahmed’s readers pointed out that it is commonly said as poonjab in America, which it totally wrong.

Most followers found the whole thing entertaining and educational, one wrote; ‘Appreciate learning this from you, even though I rarely drink lassi. If I can learn to say “pho” as “fuh” after being told once, I can learn this.’

Any other food or drinks we’ve been saying wrong our entire lives?

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