{"id":354,"date":"2011-07-06T09:56:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T07:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=354"},"modified":"2015-04-28T01:16:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T23:16:15","slug":"everythings-great-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/everythings-great-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything’s “great” in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dad never goes to the supermarket. Well, he does, but he just calls it “the market”. Why exaggerate<\/span>?<\/p>\n

If Americans are having a good time, they’ll say things are “great”. Not Dad. To him, everything’s “fine”. He means the same thing, but it sounds more honest.<\/p>\n

I find this refreshing<\/span>. For decades, an inflation of intensifiers<\/span> has been corrupting the English language, particularly in America. People have been spouting<\/span> linguistic nonsense like “tip-top”, “the absolute worst”, “the very last”, “hotter than hot”, “really great” and, more recently, “mega-cool” and “bestest”.<\/p>\n

We at Spotlight<\/i> are always conscious<\/span> of how words are used, what they mean and how they might be translated \u2014 so instead of writing about superstars, we write about actors and singers. It’s just not necessary to add that superlative. If one of our authors describes something as “very unique”, we change it to “very unusual”, because that’s correct English and it’s what was meant.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we seem to be unique \u2014 well, unusual \u2014 in doing this.<\/p>\n

It’s been said that every American trend comes to Germany, so it’s no surprise that you can turn on the TV and hear expressions like “das einzigste<\/i>” (US equivalent: “the most unique”) and “Super-GAU<\/i>” (the latter<\/span> in reference to Fukushima<\/a>). What is a \u201csuper gr\u00f6\u00dfter anzunehmender Unfall<\/i>\u201d? (American reporters referred to it as “the absolute worst-case scenario”, the word “absolute” being unnecessary.)<\/p>\n

Recently, a documentary on disaster channel N24 went a step further by saying an electromagnetic pulse would cause \u201cder absolute Super-GAU<\/i>\u201d. Of course, what can one expect from a TV station that uses the theme music from The Terminator<\/i> for its weather reports?<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the British have the opposite problem. They can’t seem to summon up the courage<\/span> to say what’s going on. Listen to the street interviews on Spotlight Audio<\/a> and you’ll often hear Britons say things like “I suppose it’s a bit of a problem, really” and “I’m sort of a dentist”. Listen up<\/span>, British people! Just say “I suppose it’s a problem” \u2014 and realize that either you’re a dentist or you’re not.<\/p>\n

So I’ll stand by<\/span> my theory that Americans started this inflation thing. Ask them how hot their summers are and they’ll add several degrees<\/span> to what’s in the weather report before claiming “100 percent humidity”. I have news for them: 100 percent humidity means that water is condensing onto the walls. It’s not happening!<\/p>\n

At Starbucks, a 240 ml mug<\/span> of coffee is called “short”, as though it’s not enough. Ask for the standard size and you’ll get 470 ml, a so-called “grande”. Don’t ever get the “large” size of any beverage<\/span> \u2014 you’ll never finish it. It can be 1000 ml.<\/p>\n

My dad is happy to find a quarter<\/span> on the sidewalk<\/span>. But he only needs to mention it and my mom will say she found a dollar. Inflation can be tough to deal with, in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published at www.spotlight-online.de<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My dad never goes to the supermarket. Well, he does, but he just calls it “the market”. Why exaggerate? If Americans are having a good time, they’ll say things are “great”. Not Dad. To him, everything’s “fine”. He means the same thing, but it sounds more honest. I find this refreshing. For decades, an inflation of intensifiers has been corrupting … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1788,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/1788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}