Language Lessons

Today has been just absolutely fraught with gloom from start to finish. So much for California sunshine.

In other news, I am once again at one of the local Starbucks—there are, naturally, more than one—where tonight I am sipping on a small ('scuse me, I mean tall) cup of liquid dirt. Why do I come here? Why?

The mysteries of the universe never stop abounding.

Speaking of which, why is Starbucks' method of naming the sizes of their cups so weird? My "tall" cup is not tall. In fact, it looks pretty much the opposite of tall to me, which, translated, would be "short." And if they are going to label the other two sizes with frou-frou Italian names (what, is English not good enough for a company based in the last-I-checked-English-speaking Pacific Northwest?), why can't "tall" also be in Italian? Why did "tall" get the short end of the naming stick?

Let's investigate, shall we? After all, I have nothing else to do tonight. (In this context, "nothing to do" translates into "I have an enormous amount of homework hanging over my head about which I am in fervent denial.")

First things first: It seems to me we've got to figure out what the Italian word is for "tall." Does anyone know what "tall" in Italian is? Hang on a sec, I'll just consult my handy-dandy translation widget...

*hold music of your choice plays here*

The word in Italian for "tall" is "Alto." Well, that seems harmless enough. Not catchy, exactly. Still, it could be worse.

But now let's think about this. If memory serves me correctly, "alto" in Spanish means "stop." Probably more people in the States know Spanish than Italian—at least, I'm sure that's the case in my state. So that would be funny if they had a cup size that basically suggested to a fair amount of customers that maybe you should not be drinking whatever beverage you were planning to fill it with. I can see why Starbucks went with the plain old English "tall."

That still doesn't explain why they couldn't use the same language (i.e., English) for all of their cups.

I feel like asking one of the baristas (translation: "Starbucks workers"), but the line has gotten long and I doubt they would welcome my investigative probing. So I'll just mull the problem over in my mind as I sip conscientiously on my cup of coffee-that-wishes-it-were-a-rich-soil-compound (translation: Cafe Verona).

NB: In Italian, "Verona" means "Verona." In English, however, "Verona" means "the location of many tragic deaths according to a playwright who may or may not really have been named Shakespeare and who had a penchant for littering theatre stages with dead bodies at the end of most of his third acts." Just in case you were wondering.