Named after a smoked hot chili pepper that is often used in Mexican cuisine, "Chipotle" the restaurant doesn't exactly roll of the tongue. It's a pretty well known fact that this is one of the most famous food joints around that is also one of the hardest to pronounce. I personally have heard several people in my life butcher the the word chipotle. My high school track coach called it "Chipottle," and my dad still says it like "Chipolteh."
Don't worry if this is you, because you're not alone. There are tons of people typing in "how to pronounce Chipotle" on Google, or asking the same question on sites like ask.com. It's one of the top search results when you type in "how to pronounce c" along with how to pronounce Curaçao the island country, which puts it up to standards with a pretty challenging word.
How Do You Say It?
Regardless of your pronunciation, if you sound it out, Chipotle sounds like "Cheh-poat-leh." Click here to see a youtube video that sounds out exactly how to pronounce the name of the pepper and fast food chain.
Oops
This entire concept is rather amusing considering the restaurant was established in 1993 and has been extremely popular in the past five years, but the name is so often mispronounced. Even through their E. coli troubles in 2015, the fast food chain's name and reputation remains in tact, but not without some people stumbling over the words. Not that it's funny to make fun of people, but it's hard not to laugh when someone says it wrong because the name itself is actually pretty common and easy to sound out.
Clearly even though America loves to eat chipotle peppers and at Chipotle, we cannot pronounce it. Lots of people seemed to be bothered by this on the internet, but, at least we're totally aware that we cannot pronounce it and we admit it.