Why I love the intarweb, part umptybillion: pho soup blogs

Xeni Jardin 11:30 am Tue Aug 17, 2004

A weblog all about the yummy Vietnamese soup known as pho. Meat, spices, noodles, fresh herbs, and magical broth. When it's really good, it's like an angel up in heaven just peed into your bowl. This foodstuff is so versatile and bitchin', you can even get your Atkins on by just asking your waiter to hold the noodles. Genius, I know! A Vietnamese-American software developer pal once tried to teach me how to say the word properly — most Americans butcher the word into something that sounds like foe. He told me, "Just say 'fuck' without the 'ck,' but try sort of curl your voice up in pitch and tone a bit at the end." I never got the phonics right, but I still dig the pho. Link (Thanks, Joshua)

Update: BoingBoing reader John Horner says, "Whoever told you how to pronounce pho was making it all too difficult. The comma stuck in the side of the O makes it an ur sound and the question mark above it means it's pronounced as a question: fur?. Imagine yourself as an animal rights activist presented with a fur coat. My wife is Vietnamese, if that helps, and Vietnamese is a bit of a mess orthographically because it was translated from Chinese ideograms into French by a Portuguese guy."

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