Spaghetti Is More Common In Malaysia Than Nasi Lemak, But How Do You Say Bolognese?

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Safe to say we eat spaghetti here almost as much as the Italians.

It’s 11pm and you’re hungry? Looking for some local Malaysian cuisine, perhaps nasi kerabu or nasi dagang or nasi lemak? Maybe in some places you can find these, but what is more common is the availability of “western food”, which includes spaghetti.

And you don’t even have to be in big cities like KL or PJ to get spaghetti. On any given day, even late at night, you can get spaghetti in places like Paya Jaras (where is that?) and Kuang (Hello, Waze).

And the most common spaghetti dish we can find here is Bolognese.

But wait, is it Bolognese or Bolognaise? The common spelling in Italy is bolognese. According to Google, bolognaise is the French spelling.

So, we’ll stick to being Italian, sì.

But get this, Spaghetti Bolognaise is not actually a traditional Italian dish. (Wait, what?)

Bolognese implies that it is from Bologna in Italy. While the sauce, which includes meat, can be traced back to Bologna, the way the world has been serving it is NOT how they do it over there. We pour the sauce on dried spaghetti but in the region where the sauce is well known, it is served with fresh egg pasta.

Even the bolognese sauce over here is different than the Italian’s ragù alla bolognese which is a meat-based sauce while our bolognese is a tomato-based sauce with meat. The preparation style is also significantly different.

So the spaghetti bolognese we all know and love is some hybrid thing which is not exactly Italian.

Now let’s get to the most important thing. How do you pronounce bolognese?

First thing to note is that it is not pronounced bow-lock-nice. It’s also not bow-low-nest. Neither is it bow-logue-nest.

Also, we’re not going to indulge the British or American pronunciations here. Despite the dish as we know it here is not really Italian, let’s stick to finding out how the word is pronounced by the Italians.

According to Chef Luca Corleone who frequently shares about Italian food on TikTok, it is pronounced boloɲˈɲeːze, -eːse.

If you don’t speak IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), it is roughly boh-loh-n(y)eze.

@cheflucacorleone Bolognese meat sauce. This is the original recipe as recorded for the first time ever by Pellegrino Artusi #bolognese #recipe #meat #sauce #cheflucacorleone #ristorantecorleone ♬ La luna e la Fisarmonica – Ziv Moran

There you have it, the next time you hit a local “western” restaurant, hit them up with the original pronunciation.

(While we’re at it, the correct spelling is pronunciation. It is not pronounciation.)

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