Saturday 20 August 2011

America, what's up with u?

Bear with me a moment while I, to use an American term, geek out, I have a confession to make. 

Ever since I got an ass-kicking from Simmy when we played Scrabble on the beach (I know, other people surf, whatever) largely due to his use of the two letter 'word' EM, I have been in training for the rematch.  This is assisted by the iPhone4 and a selection of random opponents, but that is not my point.  My point is, they can't spell.  As a purveyor of the Queen's English I object to, amongst other things, the incessant need to omit the use of the letter 'u' in words such as colour and neighbour.  I can only assume that this is due to the inherent laziness of the nation that invented the drive-thru; why after all use additional letters when you don't have to?  My bitching about these lexical shortcomings to La Bella Milanese resulted in her observation that as a non-native English speaker she finds English English speakers far harder to understand in conversation than American English speakers because, apparently, we use a much greater range of vocabulary.  This does not exactly come as a shock given that in this town only two adjectives are employed:  amazing and douchebag - you can use them together too, think about it - how much more eloquent do you want to be? 

Which gets me onto my second point, that I live in a land where political correctness has sailed so far beyond ridiculous nobody it seems is able to call a spade a spade.  For example, when you lose a game of Scrabble on the iPhone it doesn't tell you you lost, but that you came second.  Presumably just in case you decided to sue Scrabble for the psychological trauma you suffered when an inanimate electronic device told you you were a LOSER?

Which segways nicely to today's LA fuckery in the form of this:

Really?  It's a fucking car wash.

2 comments:

  1. Oh the Malibu auto spa! Where the other love of TLOML's life used to go for a day of relaxation and pampering.

    Oh wait, that's a car I'm talking about. Madness.

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  2. PS Don't you think that sometimes our American brethren use language more precisely though? Like when they say 'items' instead of 'things' (e.g. 'there are some good breakfast items on this menu')? Hmm, maybe that's just East-Coast-by-Origin TLOML.

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