Como se dice. . .
So I have been reading a book by Bill Bryson lately titled The Mother Tongue. It is a history of the English language and how American English and British English are different. In his chapter on differing dialects in America I was surprised to find out how many different dialects there are here in the US (and how ridiculously large and varied the number are in Britain). Everyone obviously knows about the various accents which can be found across the country, ie Bostonian, Midwestern, Valley (girl), but we don’t often think about how we use different words. Clearly the big debate between soda, pop, and soda-pop gets plenty of press, but think of how many other words whose pronunciation and usage vary across the nation. It reminds me of the Gershwin duet “Let’s call the whole thing off,” where Elle Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong go back and forth on all of the words they pronounce differently as examples of how they can never be a couple.
Then I started thinking some more (always a dangerous prospect) and realized that as odd as I found the idea that I speak a different English on the west coast than they do in Maine, I had seen this just a few weeks ago when I first came to Coffee Cat and ordered a grande, only to be met with a strange look and the allegation of being a coffee snob. While my geographic history of spending so many years in Seattle certainly speaks to a certain pedigree, I would by no means consider myself a snob! It wasn’t until I was reading Bryson’s book that I realized I was the victim of a dialectic variation. For whatever reason, while Borders Books in Seattle is strange for being the only place that serves small, medium, and large coffee so Starbucks is the outsider here for selling tall, grande, and venti coffee.
In more mundane news I am seeing reminders of Seattle everywhere. I don’t feel homesick but I do miss the city. People are different here. It is almost like they are so laid back that some of them are uptight. Kind of like the people in Seattle who use Apple computers and only get coffee at Cafe Ladro because PC’s and Starbucks are too corporate for them. You need the nuts to flavor the rest of society and give a city or neighborhood a distinct feel, but too many of them and things start to get turned a little off center. For example, most of the church experiences I have had so far have been very targeted at specific segments of the population. Whether it is to the older more traditional crowd, the young parent/family crowd, or the Taize post-modern college crowd. Things seem split somewhat between the “old people with their hymns” and the “hip young kids with their guitars and drums.”
Anyway, just some random thoughts for the day. Ciao!
