Did you know cooking fahrn food can be hazardous to your kitchen's health? Oh yes. I read it just yesterday in a cooking magazine all about fahrn food from England. It said I needed to cook and stir the sauce I was making until it came to a boil. And I was to make sure it didn't catch. Catch? Catch what? A cold? On fire? SERIOUSLY? English cheese sauce can explode into flames on your stove?
Or perhaps they meant for you to make sure your sauce doesn't get all independent and leave the pot to go fishing for carp in the Thames. You know, catch? Well, what do you expect? It's fahrn food. And you know what fahrn food is, right? It's what people from fahrn countries eat.
Wait, wait, wait. Did I slip into Utahnics there for a minute? I did, didn't I.
Foreign. That's what I meant to say. Foreign food. Eaten by foreigners.
Ah, communication. Local dialects and diction can be dangerous. (Note the alliteration there. I can get away with that because I'm fahrn. At least to Utah.) Especially the diction. For example, my mother-in-law—a dyed in the wool Idaho Spud-ette—once got very exasperated while asking me to do her a little favor. She said,
"Could you pick up that card, please?"
And I said, "What card?"
To which she patiently replied, "The card at your feet."
Well I looked, but there was no card at my feet. I looked and looked again—to my M.I.L.'s accompanying eye roll. But what does she expect, bless her? I'm a fahrner. I grew up in the United States Air Force and moved every three years. I know that people from different places call things by different names. Maybe what M.I.L. wanted me to pick up was something really small and delicate. So I got on my hands and knees and inspected the carpet thread by thread for the demanded card. Or at least I started to.
My mother-in-law finally sighed, parked her hands on her hips, and said: "Oh for heaven's sake. Cord. CORRRRRD. Right there next to you. Will you pick it up and plug it in for me, please?"
Oh. Cord.
Well, why didn't she say so? Card and cord are two different things, in my dictionary.
People need to speak properly if they want something done correctly. I know, I know. Who can say what is proper? I mean, when I lived in the midwest I used to hear oldster Cincinnati-ans refer to their city as "Cincinnata." And because they all said it, it was in fact correct. I'm totally down with that. BUT, I must tell you that local pronunciations don't help much in the cause of communication for us fahrners. They do, however, make a fun soup out of grammar rules.
For example, if "cord" is pronounced "card", then it follows that a diving board is actually a Diving Bard—a Renaissance fellow who sings and/or quotes Shakespeare whilst performing half-gainers.
When somebody shocks me with unexpected news, I feel completely flahrred by it. And as we all know, right smack in the center of an apple is its car. We simply need to figure out if it is a fahrn car, or American made. And, back to the local expression side of things, some day I do hope to know what my dear mother-in-law is referring to when she asks if I want cold mush for breakfast. Sounds . . . appetizing. Wall paper paste, maybe?
Please know, gentle reader, I am not trying to make fun of anybody. I love unusual expressions, accents and dialects. Love how the rules they must point to in order to function don't actually exist. It makes speech fall like notes in my ears and gives me something to think about while falling to sleep at night.
And anyway, I'm the biggest offender of them all. I read so much as a kid I learned half of my vocabulary without ever actually hearing it out loud. So I grew up thinking Rhododendrons were not only a brand of rototiller, but were pronounced: "Roe-DODD-in-DRONN." And upon finding out I'd been saying it wrong all those years? I totally SUCCOOOMED to embarrassment.
That was great