The woman shared a video to TikTok in which she talked about the quality of the ingredients in online food shopping orders – but it was the way she pronounced ‘broccoli’ that got people talking
A mum has left the internet in stitches after revealing her unique pronunciation of ‘broccoli’.
Kate Young, a 23-year-old wife and mother from Queensland, Australia, often shares snippets of her life Down Under on social media. Recently, she posted a video discussing the quality of ingredients in online grocery orders, but it was her pronunciation of ‘broccoli’ that really got tongues wagging.
Inquiring about supermarket packing procedures for online orders, Kate asked: “If you pick the items for the online orders, I just have a question – are you, like, not allowed to give us the good produce? Because I never get good stuff, and today I bought some broccoli and you pay for broccoli per head, not per kilo.
“I usually get a massive big head of broccoli when I buy it myself, so I’m just curious do you personally pick this produce, and, it’s just like not very good, or I was told you’re not allowed to give us good stuff?” However, she pronounced it as ‘bro-kuh-lie’, not ‘bro-kuh-lee’, leaving viewers baffled.
One TikToker asked: “Are you pronouncing broccoli like that as a joke? Genuinely curious,” while another exclaimed: “BROCK O LAI…. What just happened?!” A third added: “Another day being grateful that I don’t live in Queensland because otherwise I might say ‘Broccolie'”.
Kate later confirmed that she had always thought her pronunciation of a certain word was spot on, admitting she’d been none the wiser. “I’m not sure if it’s a common thing,” she mused, before adding: “I literally don’t know how else to say it… Why has no one told me this before?” Meanwhile, some people were quick to offer moral support, with one commenting: “Literally everyone (Australian) I know pronounces it this way. I only ever hear Broco-LEE as an American pronunciation.”
The revelation follows the comic tale of a Bristol local who shared on TikTok: “23 years is a long time to be getting something wrong. Yet nobody’s ever pulled me up on it. I think this is because I’m super Bristolian and my parents are really Bristolian, and that’s where I got it from.
“So, when I was 23, I moved into my first house with my partner. We were furnishing it and just looking around to see what we could find. But there was one item that I literally could not find anywhere. I was Googling it and a few things that were similar were coming up but just not what I was after. So I gave my mum a call.
“I say, ‘Mum, I’m looking for this’ and she was like, ‘Okay, can you say that again? ‘ So I said it slower. And she just burst into laughter.”
It was at this point she realised her blunder – instead of ‘chest of drawers’, for over two decades she had mistakenly called the piece of furniture “Chester drawers”.