Recent language-y stuff

[muckefuck]

• Saturday at Café Selmarie, I had this exchange with a server:

  "I'll have the [ˌtʰʁopʰeˈʦiːɐ] (Tropezier)."
  *blank look* "I'm sorry but the kitchen is closed. We're not serving anything from the brunch menu right now."
  *exchanges glances with companions* "It's in the display case. Do you need me to take you there and point it out to you?"[*]
  "What was it you wanted again?"
  "The [ˌtʰɹɵʊpʰəˈziːɚ]."
  "I'm sorry, I thought you said 'croque monsieur'. Okay, the [tʰɹoʊˌpʰiːziːˈeɪ̯]."
  "It's a German thing[**] so I was giving it the German pronounciation."

  On the one hand, I've got sympathy for waitstaff who are not also polyglots. For all I know, this woman was working at a Turkish place last week; she almost certainly has never studied German. But you should know your menu--and if some of your items are named in a foreign language, that means knowing both the original pronunciation and common bastardisations.
  
  Really, it's as much a failure of training as anything else. Still better than that time at Turkish Bakery where I had to write out the name of my order and tell the server to hand it to the chef. But annoying all the same.
• Yesterday on the 36 bus, we were seated in front of an older Hispanic couple. It took me a while to figure out that the man was actually speaking heavily-accented English with a bit of Spanish mixed in, while the woman was doing the opposite. Judging from her rr, she may have been Carribean, but her diction was pretty clear over all and her English pronunciation of terms like "e-mail" sounded native or nearly so. I wondered later if it might be one of those very rare instances of two people each conversing in their non-dominant language.
• Today I brought to work my copy of Alexander Lipson's A Russian course. I may have already mentioned here that this text has been near-legendary in my mind ever since I copy-cataloged it for UofC nearly two decades ago. The first dialogue explains the difference between "shock-workers" (ударники), who think about life in factories even when relaxing in parks, and "loafers", who steal pencils and smoke in trolleybuses.
  
  Unfortunately, I'd forgotten the author's name and wasn't able to locate a copy again until one literally fell into my hands at keyne's back in June. Today I finally remembered to bring it in to show my Belarusian coworker. I had expected a mingled reaction of delight and horror, but what greeted me was almost pure joy at finally having a translation for ударник. Apparently she'd asked many people over the years and none of them knew had to render the word in English. "We didn't have a word because we didn't have the concept!" I explained to her.
  
  [*] I know this sounds pissy, but keep in mind that at this point we had been completely ignored for a full fifteen minutes, and when she did show up, it was with an explanation (shift change) but no apology.
  [**] Technially, it's a German name for a French thing, the tropézienne, a specialty of the French Riviera. Essentially, it's a custard-filled brioche. There version is very tasty and so big and filling that I forgot to eat dinner. Of course, the liter-and-a-half of beer I drank soon afterward may have had something to do with that as well.

Comments

[icanseenow.livejournal.com]

right out ? do you mean write out?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Fixed.

[gopower.livejournal.com]

That's why all menu items should have numbers.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

If it's on a printed menu, you can point to it in a pinch, numbers or no. But this was something in a display case inside a building which were seated just outside of. You could identify the items with numbers, but that would bring with it its own problems.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

Maybe the modern American for "shock-worker" is "workaholic." Or "type-A personality."

[sandor-baci.livejournal.com]

In the service, they were known as "Sergeant Rock". Fucking Stakhanovites.

[come-to-think.livejournal.com]

A year or two ago, I ordered a sandwich &c at a lunch counter in the burbs, and the person there did not understand me at all. After three or four tries, he summoned his boss, who translated from my dialect to his. I think he was some kind of Hispanic, but I don't know.

[pne.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I would have expected [tʰʁoˈpʰeːʦiɐ].

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it occurred to me later that that was a more likely pronunciation. Still don't think she would've understood it.

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

how are you getting aspiration before a consonant? Unless you're perceiving the devoiced portion of [ʁ] and/or the release burst of [t] as aspiration....

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a narrower transcription would be [tχʁ], but that just looks awful.

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

[tʁ̥] also works. It has a ring on it. Rings make things pretty ;-)

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

While I think that server's ignorance was in-ex-cusable (can you tell that my expectations to any kind of service are reasonably low, considering where I live...?) - personally I've never heard of a Tropezier, and I wouldn't really know how to pronounce it, tbh. I'd even suspect it was a typo of some kind.