Nigella Lawson, famed British food writer and cook who manages to make mundane kitchen activity vaguely horny, has an... interesting way of pronouncing “microwave.”
Lawson was preparing a brown butter colcannon during a Monday night airing of her BBC program Cook, Eat, Repeat, when the incident occurred, prompting a barrage of tweets from baffled and amused viewers.
“I still need a bit of milk—full fat—which I’ve warmed in the me-crow-waw-vey,” Lawson said and continued cooking without missing a beat.
Look, people pronounce words incorrectly all the time. It’s not a big deal! I absolutely pronounce “nuclear” the way George W. Bush does, and I’ve gotten through life all right so far despite that. But me-crow-waw-vey is a hell of a way to pronounce “microwave.” The English pronounce plenty of words strangely to an American ear, but even they don’t pronounce microwave like that.
Has anyone, during Lawson’s 60 years on Earth, ever told her that she’s definitely not pronouncing “microwave” correctly? Is she too hot to correct? Are we the ones pronouncing “microwave” wrong, actually?
From the Mirror:
Despite the mockery on social media, it seems Nigella may be simply showing her cultured side.
The chef seemed to confirm that her pronunciation of the word is closer to how Italian and Spanish people say microwave.
Her account liked a tweet from a fan which explained it to other viewers, which read: “[It’s] pronounced as an Italian or Spanish person would /mee-kro-wa-veh/, ie, the right way.”
Hmm, maybe it was Lawson’s posho accent that made her pronunciation sound less like Italian or Spanish and more like a mistake.