Americans face new threat to English: bilingual beer. How do you say 'lite' in Flemish?

[Wilson Gray]

OT: American beer-drinkers can be weird. I once worked at a liquor
store in Boston. I was amazed that the locals didn't consider Bud to
be the real thing (sorry about that!) unless it was the stale brew
shipped in a thousand miles from the main Pestalozzi Street brewery in
Saint Louis as opposed to the fresh brew shipped a hundred miles from
the New Hampshire brewery: "I don't want that swill. I want *Saint
Louis* Budweiser!"

Even more OT: In Berlin gibt es auch eine Pestalozzi-Strasse.

-Wilson


On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:24 AM, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU>
> Subject:      Americans face new threat to English: bilingual beer. How do you
>              say 'lite' in Flemish?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
> Americans face new threat to English: bilingual beer. How do you say =20
> 'lite' in Flemish?
>
> The pending sale of Budweiser, =93the king of beers,=94 to the Belgian =20=
>
> beer conglomerate InBev, has sparked jokey headlines like the =20
> BaltimoreSun=92s =93This Bud=92s pour vous,=94 not to mention fear among =
> =20
> drinkers of le roi des bi=E8res that the new owners of Anheuser Busch =20=
>
> might actually change the taste of their beloved Bud Light. ...
>
> InBev (a company formed from the merger of a Belgian and a Brazilian =20
> beer peddler, adding the threat of Portuguese to the linguistic mix) =20
> insists that since Budweiser is already so successful, with a 48.5% =20
> U.S. market share, they won=92t tamper with the secret Budweiser recipe =20=
>
> =96 which prompted one late night comic to quip, =93There=92s a recipe?=94=
>
>
> But that=92s not doing much to ease the fears of loyal Bud drinkers, who =
> =20
> apparently fear that InBev will turn Budweiser into a bilingual =20
> operation, like Belgium itself, more than they fear that InBev might =20
> actually seduce Americans into drinking beer that actually tastes like =20=
>
> beer....
>
> Belgian beers are multilingual, and American supporters of official =20
> English have already begun warning about the threat that this poses to =20=
>
> American beer labels, which like the Declaration of Independence and =20
> the Constitution, must be understood in their original language, =20
> English...
>
> Budweiser is as American as apple pie, or an apple pie that you have =20
> to be 21 to buy, but Americans fear that soon they will be told by =20
> their new European masters to order Bud by the litre (that=92s French =20=
>
> for liter), not the six pack, and to =93press 1=94 to order it in =
> English. =20
> Or worse yet, to =93press 2=94 or =933.=94 Fortunately they won=92t have =
> to =20
> worry about converting Bud Light calories from metric to Fahrenheit, =20
> since calories are already metric, though most Americans don=92t =20
> actually know this. . . .
>
> Read the rest on the Web of Language
>
> ____________________
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
>
> http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron
>
> read the Web of Language:
> http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org