Photo by Renee Comet, on a busman’s holiday in Vancouver
According to an xpert, in Vancouver it is:
G Y E R O W. Phonectically spelllowed wrong so u can say it the American way.
Huh? That’s what she said. O…k…. So just what IS the American way, I ask you?
There is a choice to make when you talk about gyro, even if you are in Vancouver and the spelling is gyerow. You can choose the high road and sound pretentious (that will not be me, seeing as I could barely remember how to spell the word). Yero/Euro/Yurow. Like that. Or you can choose the dumb road and sound normal. Jiro/Jyro/Giro. Like that. Arrogant or ignorant. Not much of a choice.
Same goes for pho. Can you say it? Can you bring yourself to bring the inflection uUP at the end? I cannot, not without apologizing for my pretention. On the other hand, there is the noodle tangle in ones brain that wonders, heaven forbid, if folks think you do not know how to say it. How to say it like you are, ahem, in the know. The knoodle know.
Which makes me think of a dinner I had at the Tabard Inn, served to me by someone for whom English was his second language, and American his second culture. I had a shank. A big one. Musta been pork cause it was not dainty. The waiter lowered the plate, arm aching I suspect from the heft of that joint. “Jabba jabba do,” he said, grinning.
Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
I get by on all my prehistoric knowhow.
Must say, that gyro meat looks big enough to be roasted brontosaurus.
The Lunch Encounter 