What's your favourite colour?

It’s snowing up in Dallas… so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way down here. Hahaha! Just kidding. We’ve already had our snow allotment for the year. An entire half a millimeter. It was exciting while it lasted, but I have to be realistic – it’s doubtful there’s any more on the way. I may have to take up Eric’s offer to visit Chicago now – while the frigid temperatures practically guarantee more snowfall. But it IS only about 41 here today. It ALMOST feels like it could snow at any moment. (And it certainly looks that way, seeing as the sky is once again cloudy and overcast…)

Okay, can someone tell me what’s up with those new Kleenex commercials? (Yes, I know that was an abrupt segue, but I just happened to catch a glimpse of one of these new ads, and they really annoy me.) You know, the one where there’s a couch set up in the middle of a busy city sidewalk, and random people sit down and talk about their random problems with some random stranger (a sidewalk therapist?), until they’re bawling like little girls and need – what else? – a Kleenex. These ads are so bizarre to me… if some guy in the middle of downtown Austin invited me to sit on his couch and talk about my problems, I’d be running – RUNNING – in the other direction. What kind of weirdo ad campaign IS this? It’s supposed to make me want to buy tissues? I think all it does is make me never want to meet the sort of people who would willingly sit down for a session with a “sidewalk therapist.” (Able to spout psychobabble in the time it takes for that stoplight to change! I’ll have you blaming your mother for everything bad in your life before it turns green!) They’re just really weird ads… I want to see the “bottle it all up inside” commercials…

And speaking of really weird (see, now THERE’S a segue)… yesterday, Rick sent me a link to a Microsoft message board thread. Which normally, I’m sure I wouldn’t find the least bit interesting. But this one was rather amusing. It was started by a person in the U.K., who was extremely upset that Microsoft didn’t provide a “British English” version of Windows. OTHER languages have their own versions of Windows, this person argued, like Spanish and Chinese and Danish. But the English version only comes in “American” English. So words like “favorites” and “colors” have been dumbed down into our slovenly American dialect, instead of retaining their proper British spellings, which would be “favourites” and “colours.” This person then went on to condemn America’s influence on the rest of the world, and bemoaned the fact that young people in the U.K. are starting to use words like (gasp!) “movie.” (In place of what, I wonder? Film? Cinema? Well, certainly something more proper and essential than a silly word like “movie.”)

I wondered, as I read the message board thread and the list of complaints this person had, whether he or she realized that Microsoft is an American company. And Microsoft probably assumes, no matter which dialect you’ve grown accustomed to, that anyone who speaks English can understand the meaning of the words “favorites” and “colors.” When I read books or magazines that were written in the U.K., I don’t get all bent out of shape if they haven’t been “translated” into “American.” I mean, sure, it took me a few chapters of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” to figure out that “Silk Cut” was a brand of cigarette, and that “Milk Tray” was some kind of chocolate. And I got a bit tripped up by a sentence where someone was “queuing up at the till.” But it only took a minute for me to figure out it meant “standing in line at the cash register” (although “queuing up at the till” does seem more efficient…).

And that’s kind of my point – as Nick will happily point out, languages are constantly evolving and changing. Just because I say “standing in line at the cash register” now, doesn’t mean I couldn’t eventually adopt “queuing up at the till” for its obvious practical use of syllables. The person who posted on the Microsoft message board kept talking about the “corruption” of the “mother tongue.” Because Americans spell words like “color” without a “u”? Because kids in the U.K. are starting to use the word “movie”?? I wonder if this person has ever read a work of literature – like Beowulf or the Canterbury Tales – in Old English or Middle English. They were both written in English, but it’s certainly not like any “English” WE have ever used. The “mother tongue” of hundreds of years ago was completely different than what is spoken today. In fact, the English of fifty years ago was different than it is today. And the English used fifty years from now will be different, too. So will all the other languages in the world. It’s impossible to hold a language captive and not allow it to change in any way, shape or form.

So British kids are saying “movie” – who cares? At least they’re not saying “comfortability.” (Or ARE they?) :)