So, all these so called 'hip' and 'happening' joints have an annoying way of making people feel uncomfortable just because they can't speak their retarded lame-ass jargon. What's more, wannabe über-cool dudes will actually become slaves to this weird sort of autocracy, where you pay to be made to look like a fool.
It begins with English. OMG if I go to any half-decent expensive place in Mumbai, I practically can't talk in Hindi or Marathi! It's one thing to train your staff so that they can serve customers who might have only English as the common language of communication. It's another to make it some of firewall that you need to clear before you can order food in your own country! Do people speak in English by default in a subway in Japan! or France? Out here, I have seen employees reply in English even when the customer clearly and visibly wants to talk in Hindi. And it's not as if the employee is uncomfortable with other languages. In most cases he would be as pleased to shed this stupid garb of globalism that only Indians love to put on.
Anyone who goes to a Subway in India for the first time would have to answer the question 'What kind of bread?' without having any frigging clue about what kinds there are. In US/Canada, they at least have a chart which shows you various kinds of breads and veggies and dressings. Here, you have a long line of customers who will start scowling at you in an elitist manner (the sleeveless blouses and oversized T-shirts junta), if you, for the love of your life, can't think of any other answer to "what kind of bread" than "normal". If you ask the guy at the counter what options you have, he will spew out this list of breads in this tone that is generally adopted by those who feel destiny has cast them into the company of ignorant fools. Now, I myself know exactly which dressings Subway serves, and which ones it doesn't, and I can probably tell you the ingredients for many of them, but I still don't think anybody is, becomes or needs to be considered ignorant or uncouth because an Indian does not know what Southwest means in food parlance.
Enter Starbucks, and it's another story. Common sense would have you imagine that a "tall" glass would be one that is, erm, "tall", and is likely to have "normal" or "small" counterparts, especially so when it's being used to serve coffee. But no, asking for a "Tall" coffee in Starbucks will get you what they consider "Small" coffee, and if you want what you consider a "Medium" coffee, "Grande" is what you should order. Never mind the fact that "grande" is just Spanish for "Large", so they have successfully made speakers of two languages look like asses for wanting a humble coffee. What if you want a "large" coffee? You say "Venti", which is the one word out of these three that has nothing to do with largeness or tallness. Venti is Italian for 20, and is supposed to refer to the fact that the large (sorry, "venti") cup contains 20 ounces of fluid. How do you expect even a speaker of Italian to figure that out? At least McDonalds has names like "Quarter Pounder with Cheese" which tell you that there is probably a quarter pound of meat and it comes with some cheese on it.
Most Starbucks employees won't give you the damn large coffee unless you succumb and utter the word "venti". Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wic5Mf06SJ0
Here's a news item about how this stupid dictatorship drew a customer up the wall (N.Y. Post 8/16/2010).
Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson — make that barista — for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules.
Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel — and became enraged when the barista at the franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?"
"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.
"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."
It's a different issue that the issue is not really linguistic, and has nothing to do with Correct English, but you get the point.
Why fuss over terminology? Isn't SB free to call its drinks whatever it wants? Because it is retarded and it makes perfectly sane and normal people and possibly cool people feel queasy because they can't seem to stand up to modern definitions of coolness. It's like bad grammar advice. People who make perfectly correct and well constructed sentences and start them with conjunctions like and/but walk warily in dark alleyways lest they be mugged by prescriptive grammarians.
And it's not even so that the cool crowd has all its cool fundae right. A few months ago, there was this guy who was telling me how ashamed and mortified he felt in the company of a friend who did not know what a Mojito (while narrating the incident, the guy pronounced it with a gee sound, as in giraffe) was, that too when he was sitting in a more-than-200-rupeej-per-head restaurant. 19 years of existence on this Earth, he reasoned, was sufficient time for one to know what a Mojito was. Now, I don't think not knowing what Mojito is makes anyone any more or less uncool than someone from a non-Maharashtrian family not knowing what Jhunka is. But, if I were to act snooty and pompous myself, I would claim that the fact that he knew what Mojito was, and still mispronounced it, deserved far more ridicule, considering it was he who was judging people based on their knowledge of cocktail terminology. 6-7 years of knowing what Mojito is, and being in supposedly cool circles, I would reason, should be good enough to know how you pronounce it.
Give it a rest people, and stop following stupid industry giants like stupid sheep. At least, stop judging people based on standards that have been practically set in stone by these giants and have been sub-consciously internalized by all of us.
Edit: Just remembered this stuff, so adding that too:
Show of hands please. How many of you have felt extremely annoyed at the way waiters at Pizza Hut talk? It's like they have this long English script that they have been instructed to recite with no regard to whether the customer can get even one goddamned word. Back in freshie year when I went there with my parents, this waiter who had some weirdo name came and started reciting her customary script, and my parents were like, huh? Is that even English? To top it, you are actually supposed to give meaningful replies to the questions that are hidden in the 30 second mumbo-jumbo, which means that a first timer is bound to end up feeling terribly flustered.
Congratulations on successfully speaking in a way that no speaker of any accent of English can understand.
And of course, you pay a 10% service charge on top of the 12% VAT on top of the already inflated prices for progressively reducing portion sizes for this wonderful experience.
15 people weren't lazy:
+1
Deep rooted fascination for everything from the West!
Finally. Someone tries to make some sense, and succeeds. :D
Awesome video! This is how products are named in hangout joints.. based on the coolness of the word, not what the words actually stand for. And people fall for it and feel cooler, which encourages the same process again. I have personally experienced the subway thing. It took me about 5-6 trips to actually figure out what sauces they have :P
southwest == awesome :-) :-)
damn its tasty :)
There was a time when only the so-called 'elite' would understand when you told them to "Google it!". The name Google comes from an intentional(?) *MISSPELLING* of 'googol', which, incidentally, ALSO has nothing to do with searching (The-number-naming funda reminiscent of something?). But everyone was (and is) very happy incorporating into everyday parlance. And you won't think twice about using it as your FIRST choice of word when you want to say "Search online"
The point that I was trying to make, is that whether a term is 'elitist', or 'common parlance', is dependent simply on the number of people who are willing to adopt it at the given point of time. That a corporation wishes to reach a stage when it's trade-names become generic terms says nothing derogatory about the corporation other than the not-so-insulting fact that they are perhaps too ambitious. Moreover, judging by the popularity of Starbucks and Subway, I'd think before making that accusation as well.
The fact that that a few people feel momentarily uncomfortable in the process is, well, a byproduct. It's capitalism. But that implies that it's also a free market. Bad service (iff that's what this is) will be rewarded suitably in due time. But personally, I don't see Subway and/or Starbucks going out of service any time soon.
@EE
You don't seem to have refuted anything I wrote.
I was never against new terminology.
If they can make the masses slowly adopt to the new terminology, good for them.
I was simply against the notion of coolness that people associate with all this. More so, when the terminology is anti-intuitive.
I don't become gawaar if I don't know what kinds of bread there are,
or what kinds of dressings Subway has. Looking down upon others because they are not aware of silly terminology is just plain sad.
And a country where a person can't order food in his own native place in his native language has something seriously wrong with it.
@AB :"And a country where a person can't order food in his own native place in his native language has something seriously wrong with it."
well said.
If your reformation campaign is directed at the youth who look down upon others for not knowing something that is actually worthless information, but seems to be known only by a 'privileged' few, congratulations, you are officially a part of the SECOND-youngest generation. Adults, for centuries, have been trying to do this exact same thing, though the topics may have differed. Rock Music & Feminism were some of the biggies. Like it or not, there has been, and always will be, peer pressure. Try and annihilate it - I have a feeling you'll be outnumbered by the people who think that being cool is, well, cool.
If you are out with a vendetta against the corporations themselves, you are barking up the the wrong proverbial tree. They are in it for money. They will (and are justified in the act) use whatever means possible to achieve this. You, as a consumer, may or may not choose to avail their services, but I guess that is about how far you'll get. Unlikely that there'll be a revolution about this sometime soon.
[Slightly off, while on this, I'd like to interject with the fact that at most Subway/Pizza Hut/Whatever outlets, you can very well order in Hindi. The waiters definitely don't mind it, and often become chatty. I speak from experience. If you are looking for approval from the people on the next table, however, that's the peer pressure thing again]
If your intention is (and I suspect it is) only to ejaculate your opinion into the internet world, without any definite purpose, I guess I'll have to admit, you *have* succeeded.
Pretty good post and observations. Think global and Act local is correctly instantiated when you See " Aaloo Tikki Bugger " at Mac D, India and sounds absurd when Webster defines : White cheese balls in sugar syrup for rossogulla or Fried dumpling with mash potato for samosa . There is nothing to be defensive about not knowing name or specs of food stuff.. but it pays if you can differentiate, a mom, a thukpa and a litti
+1
"a country where a person can't order food in his own native place in his native language has something seriously wrong with it"
Maybe this is a result of false deduction that I may become cool if I can do all the stuff that he/she can do given I consider him/her cooler than me for some other reason altogether.
But the problem is still with me and no the object because he/she succeeded in making me feel that I am less cooler compared to him/her.
It's a nice psychological tool actually.
+1
"a country where a person can't order food in his own native place in his native language has something seriously wrong with it"
Well it not completely idiotic to go along with the jargon...I mean its really stupid to say go to a hardware shop and ask for a ovalish thing with two pins which connects the two wires coming out of my tubelight to the bulb socket thing. The staff definitely could be more civil, but again you should know what you are getting into wherever you are going..
Also the Starbucks thing, I did ask for a medium and they gave me a grande so I suppose that could be an isolated event...
@AJRocker
Dude, I was never against jargon. Given the geeky person I am, I quite love jargon.
All I have been saying all this while is that there is nothing inherently intelligent or cool in this so called commercial sort of jargon - and knowledge or ignorance of it should not be a big deal. I don't like this 'y0 man kewl dood'-ization of something so trivial as jargon.
Pity the waiter who's boss is waiting like a hawk to pounce on him and tick him off the moment he speaks a word in Hindi.....even though his English might sound more pitiful than he himself is.
Nice read though.
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