The Moose Lexicon #Venti
Most of you already know that
stockholmvictim is working at Starbucks now, and has been for 6-8 weeks. I have entered Starbucks stores somewhat more frequently since this has become true, mostly with her, and I am the beneficiary now of an occasional free pound of coffee that she gets to take home every week. (I do not consume coffee with anything like the speed at which a free pound a week would be necessary for me. I'm still ultra-sensitive to caffeine in such quantities, to such an extent that I had a 20-ounce (we'll get to this in a moment) coffee at about 1:00 PM, and I am still wide awake - though rather tired - at 12:39 AM.)
It's true; much of my once-vehement opposition to this purveyor of expensive coffee drinks has subsided. I still don't order anything much different than a regular coffee - whatever's on offer that day - or maybe a Chai. I don't even know what the devil is in most of the drinks made there, and I'm pretty sure that anything involving espresso is probably out of the question for me unless I happen to need to run at full speed all the way to Vancouver.
I maintain one stronghold of opposition to the Man's coffee shop, though, which is my refusal to submit to their nonsensical naming convention for the sizes of their beverages. True, lots of retail food chains have sadistically dumb names for their products, which seem designed almost solely to embarrass the poor customer who wants to order one. Pity the fellow who genuinely wants a "Moons over my Hammy" . . . That could be the most delicious dish in the known universe, but I will probably never know, since I would practically die of shame were I to order one and hear those preposterous words coming out of my mouth.
Anyway, I digress somewhat. Here's where I was going: Even the silly names (including Moons over My Hammy) usually have at least some descriptive connection to the actual product. A "Frosty" is a cold milkshake-like drink. A "Whopper" is a large hamburger - and so on. Starbucks' size labels, though, do not usefully describe the size of the drink you're ordering. Let's look at them:
Small = "Tall." Other than the fact that it rhymes with "small," I can't understand why this should be the word used for a small beverage - a 12-ounce cup. The cup is manifestly not tall, unless you're comparing it to, say, a shot glass. Describing this size as "tall" makes about as much sense as calling Danny DeVito "tall."
Medium = "Grande." Depending on pronunciation, the word "grande" means "large" in Spanish, Italian, and French. But it's a medium (16-ounce) cup in their lineup. So a medium is a large. Right.
Large = "Venti." Okay, this actually has a somewhat meaningful connection to the contents of the cup, since "venti" is Italian for "twenty," the number of ounces of beverage that are contained in a cup of this size. What is not explained is why the description should be in Italian. Sure, "espresso" and "capuccino" are Italian words, but these were invented by Italians and there is no widely used English equivalent for either of these words. Starbucks, as most people know, was founded in Seattle, where the commonly spoken language is, to the best of my knowledge, not Italian. Furthermore, Italians use the metric system anyway, so 20 ounces is a meaningless measurement to an Italian. There's really no good reason to call this size a "venti" other than mere pretension to the purported sophistication of Europeans - a myth easily shattered by actually meeting just about any European.
This bias toward using foreign, especially continental European words to lend an air of sophistication to speech is nothing new, of course - American usage is still rife with the Anglo-Saxon inferiority complex that's been endemic to the English language since the Normans took over England in 1066. After that little shake-up, French became the language of the nobility while our dirty, plain, guttural and consonant-heavy Germanic-rooted words were relegated to the peasantry. We still submit to this inferiority complex whenever we pull out a word like ennui, which is really just French for "boredom." (I think this may be the single greatest example of this linguistic phenomenon, as a matter of fact. What could be more indicative of reaching desperately for sophistication than trying to lend a romantic air to boredom? Boredom is the luxury of the well-to-do (e.g. Normans) anyway; poor folk (e.g. Saxons) are usually too busy scraping out a living to get bored.)
How is that particular bit of cultural envy germane to the topic of ordering coffee at an American chain store? The point is something like this: When you start trying to invent words to rename mundane, ordinary things, you usually end up with a label that just confuses some people and doesn't describe what you're talking about any better than the original, ordinary word. In many cases, like that of Starbucks drink sizes, it actually does a worse job of description.
But, you say, sizes are arbitrary anyway - a "large" drink at a movie theatre comes in a 50-gallon drum, but a "large" shirt at a high-fashion store is unwearable by all but the thinnest people. This is true, but at least "small," medium," and "large" within the same set of products, be they t-shirts or sodas, usually make sense in relation to each other - you know that a "small" will be smaller than a "medium." If you don't already know the naming convention, a set of labels that translate in English to "tall," "large," and "twenty" (removing for now the added confusion of two of those sizes actually being labeled in another language for no good reason) does not tell you anything about which one you should order if you don't want to have to get up to pee very urgently in half an hour.
Bottom line: while you will probably find me in Starbucks stores more frequently, I'll still be holding the line against dumb language. So, make mine a small. And decaf would probably be best at the moment, thanks.
In other inconsequential verbal news, I'm growing increasingly averse to the use of "experience" as a verb . . . but maybe I'll write more on that after consultation with Jimi Hendrix.
Believe it or not, I was going to go on longer about this subject, with discussions about other weird names for sizes, like the gluttonous '90s fad of "super-sizing" and the peculiar nomenclature of the Ripple Bagel & Deli in Indianapolis, but it's late and I think the point is made for now. Perhaps another post.
stockholmvictim is working at Starbucks now, and has been for 6-8 weeks. I have entered Starbucks stores somewhat more frequently since this has become true, mostly with her, and I am the beneficiary now of an occasional free pound of coffee that she gets to take home every week. (I do not consume coffee with anything like the speed at which a free pound a week would be necessary for me. I'm still ultra-sensitive to caffeine in such quantities, to such an extent that I had a 20-ounce (we'll get to this in a moment) coffee at about 1:00 PM, and I am still wide awake - though rather tired - at 12:39 AM.)
It's true; much of my once-vehement opposition to this purveyor of expensive coffee drinks has subsided. I still don't order anything much different than a regular coffee - whatever's on offer that day - or maybe a Chai. I don't even know what the devil is in most of the drinks made there, and I'm pretty sure that anything involving espresso is probably out of the question for me unless I happen to need to run at full speed all the way to Vancouver.
I maintain one stronghold of opposition to the Man's coffee shop, though, which is my refusal to submit to their nonsensical naming convention for the sizes of their beverages. True, lots of retail food chains have sadistically dumb names for their products, which seem designed almost solely to embarrass the poor customer who wants to order one. Pity the fellow who genuinely wants a "Moons over my Hammy" . . . That could be the most delicious dish in the known universe, but I will probably never know, since I would practically die of shame were I to order one and hear those preposterous words coming out of my mouth.
Anyway, I digress somewhat. Here's where I was going: Even the silly names (including Moons over My Hammy) usually have at least some descriptive connection to the actual product. A "Frosty" is a cold milkshake-like drink. A "Whopper" is a large hamburger - and so on. Starbucks' size labels, though, do not usefully describe the size of the drink you're ordering. Let's look at them:
Small = "Tall." Other than the fact that it rhymes with "small," I can't understand why this should be the word used for a small beverage - a 12-ounce cup. The cup is manifestly not tall, unless you're comparing it to, say, a shot glass. Describing this size as "tall" makes about as much sense as calling Danny DeVito "tall."
Medium = "Grande." Depending on pronunciation, the word "grande" means "large" in Spanish, Italian, and French. But it's a medium (16-ounce) cup in their lineup. So a medium is a large. Right.
Large = "Venti." Okay, this actually has a somewhat meaningful connection to the contents of the cup, since "venti" is Italian for "twenty," the number of ounces of beverage that are contained in a cup of this size. What is not explained is why the description should be in Italian. Sure, "espresso" and "capuccino" are Italian words, but these were invented by Italians and there is no widely used English equivalent for either of these words. Starbucks, as most people know, was founded in Seattle, where the commonly spoken language is, to the best of my knowledge, not Italian. Furthermore, Italians use the metric system anyway, so 20 ounces is a meaningless measurement to an Italian. There's really no good reason to call this size a "venti" other than mere pretension to the purported sophistication of Europeans - a myth easily shattered by actually meeting just about any European.
This bias toward using foreign, especially continental European words to lend an air of sophistication to speech is nothing new, of course - American usage is still rife with the Anglo-Saxon inferiority complex that's been endemic to the English language since the Normans took over England in 1066. After that little shake-up, French became the language of the nobility while our dirty, plain, guttural and consonant-heavy Germanic-rooted words were relegated to the peasantry. We still submit to this inferiority complex whenever we pull out a word like ennui, which is really just French for "boredom." (I think this may be the single greatest example of this linguistic phenomenon, as a matter of fact. What could be more indicative of reaching desperately for sophistication than trying to lend a romantic air to boredom? Boredom is the luxury of the well-to-do (e.g. Normans) anyway; poor folk (e.g. Saxons) are usually too busy scraping out a living to get bored.)
How is that particular bit of cultural envy germane to the topic of ordering coffee at an American chain store? The point is something like this: When you start trying to invent words to rename mundane, ordinary things, you usually end up with a label that just confuses some people and doesn't describe what you're talking about any better than the original, ordinary word. In many cases, like that of Starbucks drink sizes, it actually does a worse job of description.
But, you say, sizes are arbitrary anyway - a "large" drink at a movie theatre comes in a 50-gallon drum, but a "large" shirt at a high-fashion store is unwearable by all but the thinnest people. This is true, but at least "small," medium," and "large" within the same set of products, be they t-shirts or sodas, usually make sense in relation to each other - you know that a "small" will be smaller than a "medium." If you don't already know the naming convention, a set of labels that translate in English to "tall," "large," and "twenty" (removing for now the added confusion of two of those sizes actually being labeled in another language for no good reason) does not tell you anything about which one you should order if you don't want to have to get up to pee very urgently in half an hour.
Bottom line: while you will probably find me in Starbucks stores more frequently, I'll still be holding the line against dumb language. So, make mine a small. And decaf would probably be best at the moment, thanks.
In other inconsequential verbal news, I'm growing increasingly averse to the use of "experience" as a verb . . . but maybe I'll write more on that after consultation with Jimi Hendrix.
Believe it or not, I was going to go on longer about this subject, with discussions about other weird names for sizes, like the gluttonous '90s fad of "super-sizing" and the peculiar nomenclature of the Ripple Bagel & Deli in Indianapolis, but it's late and I think the point is made for now. Perhaps another post.