A lot (note - two words, not one).
A friend forwarded this to me and it filled my heart with so much joy, I became less picky about stuff. So people want to spell their child's name Typfpfannee - is it really my place to poke fun? So kids think it's great to use the shift key randomly and spell lIKe THiS? Kids - they do the darndest things. So waitstaff think that 'bruschetta' is pronounced "brooshetta" - who am I to correct them?*
Watch this clip and I defy you not to be moved.
*Let's not get carried away by good feeling here - I really do feel it is my place to smirk at hideous spellings of (kind of crappy) names, bitch-slap young people across the head for making an abomination of the English language and give an impromptu Italian lesson to cafe staff. That is why I am the Picky Bitch.
3 comments:
Okay, I can tell you are just the right person to answer this question. What is the need for the word "waitperson"? What is wrong with waiter for both genders? We seem to have settled for actor rather than constuct a need for actpersons and so far as I know, we have only doctors, doctpersons. I imagine a picky bitch is just the right person to enlighten me.
Dear Rick,
I can see your point and 'waitperson' is definitely a clunkier version of using 'waiter' for both sexes although I'm okay with 'waitstaff'. I do believe that words can shape reality and gender-neutral words carry weight and create awareness(I admit that 'waitperson' is not a good example of that though). I know there has been a push away from 'actress' and 'air-hostess' etc.
Do you really want to know why I used 'waitstaff'? Because from memory, I posted late at night and I couldn't for the life of me think of the word 'waiter'- and that is the honest truth.
Picky Bitch aside, I think the use of gender-neutral words is important more in cases like replacing 'chairman' with 'chair' or 'workmen' with 'workers' and cases where the choice is obviously linked to gender. The whole 'ess' thing is derived from the Romance languages and their use of words like 'professoressa' and 'dottoressa', which probably derives again from their use of giving all nouns a gender.
Thanks for your comment and I will take it on board and probably stop using 'waitstaff'. But I WON'T stop correcting their pronounciation of 'bruscetta'. Is that okay?
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