I’m Not a Cat Lady

Sonia Sotomayor is a Lahd-TIIIIIIIIna!

Go ahead a call me petty, but this has been catching my ear a lot lately. As I've been listening to news updates on NPR over the last couple of days, Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as associate justice of the Supreme Court has been continually mentioned. She is, as we all know by now, the first Latina to ever win the post. And listening to the announcements, I am once again struck by the way newsreaders pronounce the word Latina. Doesn't matter if they're of actual Latin-American heritage themselves or direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims—they all seem to go out of their way to infuse the word with every ounce of Latin flair they can muster, pronouncing it: Lahd-dtiiiiiiinah!

It's one thing to honor a person's preferred pronunciation of their family name—in this case, Soto-mai-yohr—but is it necessary to put on such a performance when merely stating an ethnonym? Take Lakshmi Singh. Have you ever heard her introducing her weekly show? "From National Public Radio, it's Lahd-dtiiiiiiino USA!" Up to "it's," she sounds like any standard American-accented NPR-style newsreader. And then, just like that, she's Charo. She should go the whole hog and say "Lahd-dtiiiiiiino Oo-ess-ah!"

Okay, so her mother is Puerto Rican. (And with a name like Lakshmi Singh, who knew?) But I've heard newsreaders and announcers who don't have a drop of Hispanic blood in their veins make a meal out of Latino and Latina. Or the names of Latinos and Latinas. Like Gasia Mickaelian, on KTVU Channel 2. In the promo for her News at 5, the voiceover guy practically bursts an artery when he says her name: "Gaaaaaa-theeya Meee-kaiii-YAAAAYAAY-yian!" Why is that?

I don't hear people do this for names of people in other ethnic groups. Nobody suddenly lapses into Chinese tonal inflections when reporting about Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Perhaps it's in deference to the fact that the Hispanic population is the fastest-growing sector in the country right now. Who knows: One of these days Spanish will be the majority language, so it's probably a good idea to start brushing up. Si?

Back in the 90s

While sifting through the mountains of papers and clippings I'd accrued over the last 12 years as I prepared for my big move from New York to San Francisco, I came across this old copy of Matt Groening's "Life in Hell" comic strip. I remember loving it when I first saw it, lo those 10-plus years ago, so much so that I kept it all this time.

It's ages since I've seen it, though. And holy cow, I am floored by how many of these buzzwords—all clichés by 1998—are still in heavy usage today. It's not even like they went away and then came back into vogue, like frickin' metallics, for the umpteenth time already. They never left. A few of them are embarrassingly dated or obsolete, perhaps, but the majority are words and phrases you'll still hear today in any office, classroom, nail salon, nighclub, sitcom, commercial, reality show or movie theater near you. Click image to enlarge.

So WHAT?

There’s something that’s been bothering me for a really long time now, and it’s about time I shared.

It’s the way everybody has started using the word so. They’re using it all the time. People of all ages, from coast to coast, north to south, overuse this word, but it is especially prevalent in among the under-thirtysomethings, i.e., Generation MySpace.

Spacers are using the word so instead of um or y’know and sometimes but, and what’s even worse, it always comes out in a really flat note an octave or two lower than the rest of the sentence. It makes everyone sound vaguely Chinese. 

It can be delivered in a long, barnyard sound, with extra syllables thrown in--seeeyyoooowwwwww--or a short, sharp yelp, like an airhorn blast, or Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!”

So gets arbitrarily tacked onto the end of a sentence; used to string sentences together;  sometimes it is the sentence. You’ll hear it bleat from the sticky glossed lips of young women everywhere yabbering vacantly on their cell phones. “Sooooo. Yeah, where are we meeting later?” “I just got out of work, so.” It’s used to fill in a void, to provide  a declarative end to an uptalker’s statement (“I don’t think he’s going to show up? So...”). It can suggest an apology, a challenge, or a studied nonchalance. Whenever someone on the street is coming towards me yakking on their cellphone, I place a silent bet with myself that just as just as they pass by, they’ll say it. And about 9 out of 10 times they do! Are they doing it on purpose? Am I causing it? I’m not so sure anymore. 

I hear it absolutely everywhere. I’m walking down the street and this guy behind me says to his friend, “I like Shake Shack but there’s usually a wait but it’s worth going online to check first, so.” I’m  at the hair salon and I hear a hairdresser instruct his client, “Just shampoo and leave it in, you don’t really have the kind of hair that needs layered conditioning, so.” 

And I just want to scream, “So WHAT???”

It’s driving me a little bit crazy, in case you haven’t noticed. In fact, it’s been tweaking my nerves for well over a year. I’ve always been sensitive to other people’s verbal tics. Like, I once knew a guy who ended all his sentences with “… but still.” As in, “I thought he was going to call me at 3, but still.” And this girl who had a stutter, so used to run up to every sentence with “But though...” Sometimes she’d get stuck: “But though, but though, but though...” God bless ’er, she couldn’t help it. But there was this other girl with a broad, flat California accent who had a way of ending “-ing” words with “-een”. Once she listed all the activities she was looking forward to in an upcoming action-packed vacation: “We’re going hikeen and fisheen and bikeen and golfeen and horse-back rideen and swimmeen and kayakeen…” I had to stop being friends with her, it was so annoying.

Now I am being driven crazy every day by this irritating Tourette’s-like tic that the whole world seems to have adopted. I hear the superfluous so whenever people on reality shows are talking to camera. I hear it on the radio and TV news whenever people are being interviewed. I hear it said by the British—seeewww; the Australians—soooooiiee; the French, the Arabs, the Pakistanis. Everybody has their own unique little phonetic flourish. I’ve even heard it scripted into commercials, movies and TV shows. If you want a classic example, check out this clip from The Office, when David Brent makes an ass of himself with The Dance. See if you can count the sos.

And I love The Office. But still... But though... It’s sooooo annoyeen!!

UPDATE: Now this is a perfect example. I love Emily Gould,  I really enjoy her writing on gawker. As this clip started I thought, God I hope she doesn’t say it. We get three-quarters of the way through, no so. And then, ack! Out it comes. For no reason. It didn’t need to be there.

Can’t everybody stop? Pretty please?