Dictionary's Pronunciation Guide Admits Nobody Knows How to Say 'Quinoa'

The Standard English Dictionary has become the first major reference work to officially list the pronunciation of 'quinoa' as 'disputed,' after a survey of 10,000 English speakers produced seventeen distinct pronunciations, none of which achieved majority acceptance. 'We expected some variation,' said phonetics editor Dr. Patricia Schwa. 'We did not expect seventeen different phonemic interpretations of a five-letter word. Some respondents rhymed it with Noah. Some rhymed it with Genoa. One person pronounced it to rhyme with paranoia. That's not possible, but they did it.' The survey results included KEEN-wah (the most common, at 31 percent), kwin-OH-ah (14 percent), KWIN-oh (11 percent), kin-OH-uh (8 percent), and kee-NO-ah (7 percent). The remaining 29 percent was distributed across twelve additional variants, including one respondent who pronounced it 'Karen' and declined to explain why. 'The fundamental problem,' Dr. Schwa explained, 'is that quinoa comes from Quechua, passes through Spanish, and arrives in English with a spelling that conforms to none of these languages' phonological rules. English speakers look at Q-U-I-N-O-A and their brains simply refuse to commit.' Previous editions of the dictionary listed the pronunciation as /kinwah/, which Dr. Schwa acknowledged was 'the closest to the Quechua original but approximately no one says it that way in a grocery store.' The new entry reads: 'quinoa /kinwah, keenwah/ noun: a grain crop grown primarily in the Andes. Pronunciation note: variation is extensive and no consensus exists among English speakers. Exercise caution when ordering aloud.' Dr. Schwa has begun a similar survey on the pronunciation of 'acai,' 'gyro,' and 'Worcestershire,' which she expects will 'yield similarly chaotic results and keep me employed for the foreseeable future.'