Language discussions on tap

Hello there friends, and welcome to this week's entry at UOPTA. No, that doesn't stand for, "Unctuous Octopi Patrol The Atlantic," but I have to imagine that that's true. They look way too nefarious to just be swimming around there, and "patrolling" seems to capture their look a little better. Instead, this UOPTA is where I jot down some things on my mind for your intended reading enjoyment. I'm so glad we cleared that up. (Thanks to loyal reader Sue for providing that UOPTA. You can send your own in to ptklein@gmail.com. Yes, even you.)

I have two separate language items on my mind today, so I'm going to start with those and see where they take me. First up is the one that isn't about English. I was listening to the Dodger game in my car a few days ago, and they'd just gotten a couple of hits in a row off of the opposing pitcher. Announcer Charley Steiner then told me and the rest of the listening audience that the other team was taking out their pitcher. Then he said something like, "This pitching change is brought to you by Tapatio hot sauce. Not too mild and not too spicy, Tapatio is the perfect change to make any meal better." Again, I'm paraphrasing. I loves me some Tapatio, and I put it on (or in) many things that I make. A toasted bagel with cheese, black bean soup, polenta...it doesn't matter. I think it's glorious, and way better than its wooden-headed competitor Cholula. But I wasn't thinking about the kick-ass nature of the sauce right then. Rather, I had noted that Mr. Steiner said "Tapatio" like the first syllable was the same as in "tap dance" instead of "top," as it's said in Spanish. I immediately forgave him his transgression and smiled at the fact that everything is sponsored by something now. I remember when NBA games starting having the "Prudential At The Half" shows, but now every time out is sponsored by Corona or some other company trying to loosely tie themselves in thematically with that part of the game. It's how it goes, and that's neither good nor bad in my eyes.

Since things go rather slowly at times in baseball, they took a commercial break to bring in some revenue during the pitching change. Again, good for them, as it's the nature of the beast. A jingle began: "Tap into the taste, tap into the taste, Tapatio." The voiceover guy in the commercial said something similar to what Mr. Steiner had about Tapatio being the perfect complement to meals, and he - like the jingle-singling ladies - also said it like "tap dance." That wasn't ok with me. They purposely picked a voiceover guy who sounded Hispanic "for authentic purposes" I imagine, but then anglicized their own product name?

I got home and told my lovely wife about the commercial. "You said TAPatio," she said. "I know," I said, while my accompanying face and nod said, "That's the part I was hoping you'd catch." "But that sound doesn't exist in Spanish," she replied. And I fell in love all over again. You see, she's absolutely right (and apparently listens to my linguistic tidbits and rants when I go off). Even if you don't speak any Spanish at all, you know some words from being alive in this time and place. Think about the one A sound in "hola," the two in "salsa," and the three in "manana." Notice something they all have in common? It's the same sound we find in English in words like "mama." Except in Spanish, that's the only sound that vowel makes on its own. (When paired with other vowels, there are combined sounds that are awesomely called "dipthongs," but I'm talking about the letter by itself.) Same with the other vowels. That's why reading Spanish words is fairly easy - you never have to worry about the crazy stuff English throws at us vowel-wise, like "how" and "mow." (As a side note, Japanese seems to be the easiest language to sight-read that I can think of. Even longer last names are quite simple when you take them one syllable at a time.)

Was the phrase, "Tap into the taste" so important to them that they changed the fundamental pronunciation of their product's name to match it? I guess so. I happen to think that we silly consumers would've been able to hear the correct pronunciation after "tap into the taste" and still get the connection between the two. But maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

I understand that the anglicization of foreign words happens all the time. I live in "loss ann jill iss" after all. But this is different to me since the good people at Tapatio are doing this themselves. Oh well, they're still very far away from a Peter Klein boycott.

The other language item on the docket today involves my native tongue. (That's English, in case you couldn't tell.) It all started when I got a text message from my favorite brother. It read, "What is the difference between inter- and intra-personal skills?" It's funny he should ask that, because I very recently corrected a co-worker when he wrongly used "intra" instead of "inter." Since I had just had that conversation, I used examples that had worked for my co-worker in my reply to my bro. "Intra is within something. Like intramurals are within the walls of a school, but an interstate is between two states (or more)." While those examples had illustrated my point before, it only confused matters here (maybe because I didn't really answer his question, in retrospect). He replied, "Intra-personal skills area just knowing about your own internal behavior, attitude, habits? How is that a skill? I know what I like. I'm skilled!" I went right to the crux of the matter: "I've never actually heard anyone use intra-personal skills before. Unless you're talking about someone with multiple personalities." I figured that someone had just mis-spoken or maybe he heard something wrong. He replied, "Shawn's (my favorite nephew) TV show says that it enforces the use of inter- and intra-personal skills. That is where I got it from. A fucking cartoon. Wow Wow Wubbzy!" I assumed that that was the name of the show and not just the way that Kevin ended passion-filled text messages. I looked it up, and technically the show's name is hyper-punctuated as "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!" That would get really annoying to type after a while.

I still thought that "intrapersonal skills" sounded made up, or at the very least, extremely easy. I typed the term into the all-knowing Google, and the first thing it came up with was, "Did you mean interpersonal skills?" I looked at the listings below, and I saw one site in which someone took the time to define the confusing term. As I expected, it all boiled down to knowing yourself' and ways in which you as a person come across to others. How does a children's cartoon teach that? I suppose I could watch an episode and try to figure that out...or I could just end this paragraph and move on.

Well looky here. I thought of two other quick language-related items in my quest for more words. First up, do you think it's possible for someone to say the phrase, "Run along now" and not have it come out as condescending? I don't think so. I just came up with a few possible scenarios in which the utterer of that phrase meant it sincerely, but every single time I got to the actual words, they always came out sounding bad. "Run along now," I believe, has a good amount of built-in condescension. Can you think of other phrases like that?

And lastly, my old Linguistics professor once tried making a point in class about how we change the way that words are said in our language over time. I wouldn't argue with that, naturally, but his example wasn't making any sense to me. "Take the word 'bedroom' for example," he began. "We've turned it into a whole new word that's closer to 'bedrum' or 'beh-droom.' What kind of word is that? 'Bedrum.' Come take a look at my bedrum," he said. Normally I would pick up that which he put down, but I didn't see eye to eye at all with him on this one. Then he explained himself: "Say you keep all of your trophies on one room; you'd call that the Trophy Room, right? Or all of your music is in your Music Room. But what if you had a room in which you kept a whole bunch of beds? You'd call it the Bed Room. That's how the word was originally pronounced. Bed Room, not 'bedrum' or 'beh-droom' like it is now." I began to see his point. As I walked through my imaginary house, I said to no one in particular, "Here is my Dish Room, up on the left is the Burrito Room, and on the right is the Bed Room. Yes, I keep all of my miniature beds safely locked up in my Bed Room." And it did indeed sound different than how I would currently point out a bedroom with one real-sized bed in a non-imaginary house (which is closer to 'beh-droom').

And with that, let's overanalyze our syllables on down to the Car Watch.

My Bratty Kid Sister sent me a license plate that she saw recently. It said, "RADFOOD." I wrote her back asking if it was like totally gnarly pizza with some Mountain Dew, but she didn't reply. I'll take that as a yes.

My homey Rockabye saw a license plate frame that gave me pause: "My other car is the big fella." My first thought was, "Shaq?" My second thought was wondering if it was a woman talking about her man as "her other ride." Ya know, like a "My other ride is your mom" type of thing. But it specifically said "car," so I'm not sure I can make sense of it. Unless...nah. Well maybe...nope. Just say it already! Fine. Unless his or her other car truly is a large vehicle that s/he has nicknamed "the big fella." That's possible, but it's mighty rare to have a "my other car" frame actually refer to the driver's other car.

And last but not least, I saw this plate: "LV PB+J." Wow. I understand that it's tasty, but that might be an unhealthful relationship going on there. I love burritos in a big way (I have an imaginary Burrito Room, for Pete's sake!), but that's not making it on my license plate. To put one's overwhelming adoration of a sandwich out there is...daring.

Ok, that's it. My eyelids are getting heavy. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll be back here with more stuff next Friday. In the meantime, here are the slim pickins of happies over the next week: Happy Mexican Independence Day on Wednesday (not on Cinco de Mayo, which a lot of people erroneously assume), and Happy half-St. Patrick's Day on Thursday. My lovely wife says that one doesn't count, but that's all I've got. Have a great weekend and week, homepeople, and remember you can email me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. Shaloha.