A few months ago I was in the waiting room for my GF’s doc. This mother was having her young kid read a kids book to her. The kid is saying “ Aww Nnnn …” Mom says “No, no, sweetie, sound it out. Wah, Wah, wah; once.” I snorted. I might have written an entry about it, I don’t remember. I probably didn’t ramble about the rules of English and education though, I probably just made fun of the mother. The kid was actually doing pretty well despite moms help.
The first couple years of school they aren’t teaching the language, they teach writing and reading. By the time a kid goes to school they already know the language, if not all the words. The first few years of learning to read is pretty much rote memorization. Things like the alphabet song help a lot, but not because it’s mnemonic or anything, and sure it rhymes, in spots, but a letter is only pronounced like the name of the letter in certain circumstances in any language that also has a written language. The alphabet song helps because 1) everybody sings it and 2) it has one thing the kids already know to it; meter.
Most kids from Montana know the difference between Butte and Butt and yet they haven’t yet (if ever) been taught the conditions under which a vowel at the end of a word in English modifys the pronunciation of a previous vowel. In Butte there is probably a starbucks, great squirmy douchebag of a company that it is, in Butte you have to order your medium coffee as a Gran-day. The rule that has Butte pronounced Bewt in English would have Grande pronounced Gray-ned. Of course it’s supposed to be Italian — in every romance language that uses a form of Grande, however, it doesn’t mean “medium”. Squirmy, wriggly, bloated douchebags. Another part of speech not taught in school but understood by everyone, which corporations pretend to promote feminine hygiene but really just Grande vaginally Shame customers. Muy grande, trey mooey granday with aldante vinegar rinse. Or as mom at the doctors office might say “No, sweetie, it’s grr, grr, grr Doosh.”
At some point someone is thinking, the guy with the typos, missing words and occasional straight fails is ranting about language? Sweet Fancy Moses on a zagnut. I think kids in Cedar Rapids think the school principal came from Butt Montana. Just saying.
There was a reason I was thinking of this today … Oh yeah. I think in this town they haze new employees on Christmas eve by having them work without supervision. Among the many places I dragged my recently (yesterday) drilled tooth and jaw today, was the grand traverse pie company. There was a back up of some kind and this guy left in an angry huff telling them they could shove his misorder up their Grande Tra-verse Pie hole. He might have been trying to be funny, he didn’t look funny. I’m thinking mispronouncing Traverse ( City, a town in the north) for Tra-verse, to travel, might have been on purpose. When I got up to order I figured out if not what the hub-bub-ba-loo was at least why there might be one. My order taker stood there and argued with her cash register because it kept calling my order a tuna salad. The order was up before she straightened things out. Um, I would have asked someone who knew how to run the register … but I’m well known for my pragmatism. Heh. I crack me up.
I guess my real point is Have a Grande Mary Christmas whether it be in Butte or Butt. Or as mom would say “No, sweetie, kuh, kuh, kuh Christmas.”
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