Lidl and Aldi have become beloved of UK supermarket shoppers, competing strongly against their 'big four' rivals Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons.
One thing that has come to light amongst all this, though, is that we've been pronouncing both supermarket's names incorrectly.
Apparently if you've been saying Aldi as 'All-di', and dragging out the 'A' sound, you've been doing it all wrong. That's millions of us, surely.
According to the retailer itself we should be saying 'Al-di', like the name Alan.
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As for Lidl? We'd wager most of you are getting it wrong. Most of us in the UK would call it 'lid-uhl', but in actual fact the store's hometown in Germany pronounces it 'lee-dell'.
Until now, these two misconceptions were up with the great brand pronunciation debates of our times. Joining them in the pantheon of greats is of course Nutella - pronounced by many as 'nut-ell-ah' due to being made from hazelnuts, though its correct enunciation is 'noo-tell-uh'. Then there's Adidas - pronounced 'add-dee-dass' and not 'ah-dee-duss'.
More recently, the way the nation has said the name of clothes brand Moschino has proven to be way off - supposedly 'mosk-ee-no' and not the 'mosh-ee-no' that most of us use.
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With the current, um, furore over getting the Aldi and Lidl names wrong, we thought we'd do some deep research (looked on Youtube) to see if either company had offered any clues in their adverts as to how we should actually pronounce them - and we didn't have to dig deep.
Aldi's most recent spot You Might Like Aldi repeatedly pronounces the name as the aforementioned 'al-di' and not the 'all-di' that many of us might have assumed:
However, watch the We're Always Lidl On Price clip - or indeed ANY Lidl advert - and you'll quite clearly hear the store pronounced as 'lid-uhl'. So perhaps they can forgive us in the UK for pronouncing their name incorrectly, given they do so themselves:
Just recently data consulting agency Kantar reported that Lidl had become the fastest growing supermarket for the first quarter of this year.
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Sales at the chain were up 11.4 percent in the first 12 weeks of 2020, taking its market share to 5.8 percent.
Aldi, meanwhile, grew 5.7 percent, giving it a 7.9 percent market share - contrast this with the big four, which saw only Sainsbury's announce a growth.
At least we can all be fairly confident we're pronouncing Sainsbury's correctly.
Featured Image Credit: PA