A Mysterious Case of Ordering a Lat-tay
Posted on October 18, 2019
By Julia Szagdaj
There are many struggles I imagined while moving to the United States as an international student but ordering a coffee with milk wasn’t one of them.
But there it was – the daily struggle of ordering a coffelatte – the magical poison, which entered our daily life since its invention in the 17th century in Europe [1] and desired by many since then, especially Graduate students at The New School. So here I was, standing voluntarily in a very long line, joined by the army of other voluntary addicts, just to spectacularly, repeatedly fail in ordering a latte in a coffee shop (which never added me more fans down the line, surprisingly), in a presumably simple, well-established system of communication infrastructure with a transaction-based outcome.
After long weeks of being too proud (“I can’t believe my English is THAT bad), too stubborn (“I won’t change HOW I speak”) and finally being too tired and terrified of my angry fellow-line-sharing-new-yorkers (a very dangerous species, which you would preferably not cross paths with), I finally reached out to my native-speaking friend for an advice.
“I need to admit something to you”, I said a bit bluntly. “For weeks I have trouble ordering coffee, I think I might be saying something wrong”. “Sure, say it”, my friend agreed with a curious note in her voice. “I would like to order a coffee latte”, I said and looked at her with a mix of hope and irritation. “Oh,” my friend nodded to her thoughts while listening to my imaginary order, “I hear the problem,” (and that wasn’t the imaginary part) “You see, the word is actually pronounced lat-TAY not a lat-teh“.
And with this simple explanation, my mind exploded. While educating myself in complex systems, I expected language or phonetic struggles from any of Haraway’s mind-bending books, but I’ve never thought I would investigate the struggles of ordering a coffee with milk. More so, for the argument of deductive thinking, the possible act of a mispronunciation shouldn’t be able to abrupt this simple or even primitive transaction infrastructure.
Committed though to stay with the trouble [2], feeling like an underpaid actor in a bad 70s sitcom that never ends, I abductively collected the dust from the unwillingly repetitive scene of my mornings into the following observations:
Thought 1.
Sensographicly speaking, many other factors are happening in this situation besides “right” or “wrong” sounds that theoretically should help the process of understanding but don’t seem to work: the context of being in a coffee shop; speaking the same language (apparently); the written name of a beverage all over the scene; the repetitiveness of the behaviour of all the actors; the other person just getting her latte before me, or the one getting one after me; even the smell of coffee and milk, or coffee machines and milk containers surrounding us that could help create right connotations to make this interwoven scene easier to decode.
Thought 2. (freshly noted after another unsuccessful order)
How is it possible that I had fewer problems communicating while traveling for a few months through South America armed only with a few Spanish words than in the United States armed with years and years of studying English?
Thought 3.
If I was a stubborn linguistic-historian, I might argue that the English pronunciation right now of the phrase “coffee latte” has little to do with the original phonetics (and just makes you want to tweet “FAKE NEWS!”). It’s just an example of linguistic imperialism walking straight and confident into the loanwords from other languages like a white, privileged man to well, take over. Actually, the word “coffee” comes from Arabic qahwah, and came to Europe through its Turkish neighbors in the form of kahveh. [3] Maybe over 600 years of Polish-Turkish relationship [4] left more marks than expected since Polish pronunciation is even closer to the original – kawa. The etymology of the word latte, on the other hand, comes from the Latin word (lactis) and it’s an Italian expression meaning “milk coffee” [5], with the stress on the first syllable and a short “e”. So again, if I was a stubborn linguistic-historian (which I’m not) I might have even dared to argue that my natural hunch-based pronunciation kawa [làt-te] might have been the closer nod to the historian accuracy (but who has time for that, especially in the morning) than its American version.
What emerges for me from this, is that although New York is one of the most diverse ethnically cities, there is an established precedent of accepted English-based-hyperforeignism on loanwords from other languages, which forces the one, unequal standard of the “right” pronunciation. Doesn’t it seem really old-fashioned?
Can we then this city as an entity learn equality even through a microlens of ordering a lat-tay? As defined by Steven Johnson learning it’s not only about knowing, it’s about “being able to recognize and respond to changing patterns” [6]. Following that logic, if we know that New York City is indeed a diverse city, we should respond to that and change current linguistic capitalism.
Even though, I realize it might be a bit hard to force all of the English-native speakers to rethink how they adapted the loanwords to their language (or should I?), I would argue that the spectrum for a “right” pronunciation* is too narrow, and let’s say it – not respectful either to the past of or the critically fabulated future.
As a new morning arrives, I can’t help but wonder – how long do I need to stay with this trouble… to finally get a latte?
*[pronunciation – an evil tool used as torture in communication, invented by English native-speaker-usurers to foster control over no-English speakers].
[1] [3] Ukers, William H. 2009. All About Coffee. 1st ed. New York: NEW YORK THE TEA AND COFFEE TRADE JOURNAL COMPANY.
[2] Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2016. Staying With The Trouble. 2nd ed. Duke University Press Books.
[4] Various Artists. “Far Neighborhood – Near Memories. 600 Years of Polish-Turkish Relationship”.2014. Exhibition. Istanbul: Sakip Sabanci.
[5] “Latte | Origin, And Meaning Of Latte By Online Etymology Dictionary”. 2019. Etymonline.Com. https://www.etymonline.com/word/latte.
[6] Johnson, Steven. 2012. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. Scribner.