bathory.ca

Short musings on language

I remember a few years ago my eldest sister made a comment about Starbucks that was something like “I refuse to learn a new language to order a coffee”. She was referring to their tall/grande/venti sizing and a few other little marketing/corporate language choices that were part of their established brand. (Note: She was NOT referring to non-English languages in general, but specifically made up corporate-jargon).

At the time I didn’t drink coffee and hadn’t really considered this as an inconvenience. The teas they serve at Starbucks are terrible and so I’d always stayed close to Canadian brands like Second Cup where they use traditional sizing words – small, medium and large.

When she brought it up I understood her position but I remember feeling like it was too vehement a reaction to something that seemed fairly trivial, but I also sympathised with her disdain for corporate take over of life.

This morning I wandered down to the Starbucks located along the pier of Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, where I’m staying for 2 weeks. The coffee in the hotel is ok, but tiny, and after enduring the rumblings of a nightclub below my hotel room until 5am I really needed the pickmeup of a LARGE coffee. (Obviously I drink coffee now).

I generally order a “Venti, sugar-free vanilla skinny latte”. In the UK, where I picked up the coffee habit, a skinny latte is not automatically “sugar free” so I always make sure to repeat that, and revel in the eye rolling that LA baristas give me as if I’m somehow inconveniencing them by making sure my drink isn’t 700 calories.

My spanish isn’t great. I can usually order off a menu and make slight adjustments (sin queso, con gaz) but it dawned on my that I couldn’t remember know how to say “skinny” in Spanish. (It’s flaco). I thought maybe, I could just say Vanilla latte, without sugar, and milk with no-fat. It’s clumsy but I know all those words in spanish.

Armed with my new mantra of “Vainilla latte sin azucar y leche sin grasa” I walked to Starbucks.

Thank goodness for corporate jargon.

I ordered a Venti, Skinny Vanilla Latte right off the menu, as it was written, and added sin azucar (just to be sure).

This is branding at it’s finest.
In the southern hemisphere the menu is in pretend italian-english just like it is everywhere else and I didn’t have to use my silly jumble of spanish to get my coffee.