A young mother has caused a stir online for her pronunciation of the word “broccoli.”
Katelynn Young23, posted a video on TikTok in an attempt to understand how personal shoppers for Coles and Woolworths choose products for each order.
She wondered if they were giving online customers the worst possible fresh fruit and vegetables, then showed off a small head of broccoli she had received.
And the video went viral – but most people were obsessed with the way she pronounced the vegetable’s name – instead of the popular ‘broccol-EE’ she used ‘broccol-EYE’.
“Do you say broccoli like that as a joke?” a woman asked.
“Brocco-what,” asked another.
“BROCK O LAI…. What just happened,” a third asked.
But Katelynn swore she spoke normally.
“I literally don’t know how else to say it, why hasn’t anyone ever told me this,” she asked.
Some people stood up for her.
“It’s a Queensland thing,” one person wrote.
“My grandma says it like that and I like it so much,” one woman added,
While another said: ‘Everyone in Australia said it that way – and then the American way of saying it took over.’
But others were not convinced.
“Didn’t you grow up around literally everyone talking about vegetables,” one woman asked.
Adding: ‘It’s very quirky.’
Katelynn’s post made people wonder if they had been speaking wrong their entire lives.
“I thought I said it wrong and then I read the comments,” one woman said.
The original Italian for the vegetable sounds closer to the commonly accepted ‘Brocco-LEE’ than to Katelynn’s version ending in ‘eye’.