Radio Script #1255

Little Talks on Common Things
November 30, 1980

On this program, with its generally serious note of historical items, we ought occasionally to have a touch of humor. So today let us consider what is called European English – the ways in which some people across the Atlantic express in English what is to many of them a foreign language.

We well know that there are distinct differences in the English language in different parts of the English-speaking world. American English varies a lot from British English, and Australian English has many expressions not common to either British or American.

It was H. L. Mencken who first used the term American English. In his distinguished work, the American Language, Mencken pointed out that differences from British English had been so numerous that this side of the Atlantic had created a language of its own. In England a drug store is a chemist shop, an elevator is a lift, and Britishers still persist in inserting a “u” in such words as labor, honor, and color.

The American traveler in different parts of the European continent sees some strange English signs. Merchants, eager to let tourists know that someone inside speaks English, have put up signs like these outside their shop: “English goodly spoken,” “American pronounced inside,” “Here speaking English.”

A sign on a clothing store in Paris tells the tourist, “Come in and have a fit.” There was a double meaning of another sign in a store for women’s wear: “Dress for street walking.”

A doctor’s sign in Milan, Italy, announced: “Specialist in women and other diseases.” A sign in the lobby of a hotel in Germany warned guests: “Improper to have visitor of other sex in bedroom. Use lobby for that purpose.”

At the entrance to a restaurant in Copenhagen is a sign, “Children served less.” A check-out sign in a Brussels hotel says: “All rooms not by Monday will be paid for Tuesday.” In Amsterdam guests were told, “If this is your visit, you are welcome to it.”

In one of Germany’s smaller cities visitors were told to take a tour of the town: “Take one of our horse-driven city teams. We guarantee no miscarriages.”

On an Italian ship, passengers were told how to don the life preservers, “Assault the tying apparatus about the bosoms and let it neat behind.” Warning winter travelers in Norway was this sign: “Go lightly in the snow, and look for ski demons you can hit.”

A restaurant in Marseilles wanting to be sure to meet a time-honored habit of Britishers put up this sign: “Five o’clock tea at all hours.”

Even in English-speaking Britain, the American sometimes encounters strange English. Here is one in a hotel in the Lake District: “The lift is being fixed for the next few days. During this time we regret you will be unbearable. A continental hotel has this sign in its self-service elevator: “To move cabin, push button to visiting floor. If cabin shall enter more persons, each should press button number visiting floor. Cabin is then stopping alphabetically in natural order.”

Near the Scottish border is a restaurant sign: “Our establishment serves tea in a mug like mother.”

A restaurant in Paris, particular about its patron’s dress, put up this sign: “A sports jacket may be worn to dinner, but no trousers.”

Another, seeking some fancy euphemism for eggs, announced: “Extract of fowl poached or served sunny side up.”

Trying to accommodate the British visitors’ custom of leaving shoes outside the door to be shined, an Italian hotel, having had too many complaints about stolen shoes, put up this sign: “To prevent shoes from mislaying, please do not corridor them.”

Hilarious to Americans was this dentist’s sign in Madrid: “Teeth extracted by latest methodists.”

A restaurant in Istanbul had this to say: “Offering my guests delighted meals is only trying. Kind assist me in my talk with at least one meal a day at my place where my specialty is pig.”

Noting that guests were cumbersome in eating spaghetti, a restaurant in Florence gave instructions: “The spaghetti are not to be cut by making nice shorter. Seize with point of the fork and spiral them. They will form a length just right if you will lightly open mouth.”

Instead of being accidental slips from standard English, some of the signs make deliberate, intentional mistakes. A dress shop in Rome had a sign. “Our dresses advertised in Harp’s Bazaar’! When repeatedly told that the name was Harper’s, not Harp’s, the proprietor said, “That sign bring a lot of trade. At least three Americans come in every day to point out the mistake. Once they are inside, I can usually sell them something.”

Now let us turn to something more serious – so serious that it is hurting all of us more and more just where it hurts most, in our pocketbooks. I refer to government spending at all levels – municipal, state and national. The portion of spending that is caused by inflation – the steady decline in purchasing value of the dollar – is bad enough. But a much larger part is caused by waste and inefficiency. We find that not only unthinkable but inexcusable.

There is one important factor in the rise of government spending that is difficult to control, because we, the people, are chiefly to blame. That is the presence, year after year, by innumerable special interests as business, labor, environmentalists, the elderly, the hospitals and nursing homes, the hunters and fishers, the pro-nukes, and the antinukes – all have kept a paid lobbyist, not only in Washington, but in every state capital.

A strong voice against excessive spending by Congress is that of Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin. He says: “There are hundreds of ways to shear the lamb that is the American taxpayer. Special interest lobbies fight for their own narrow interests. They all proclaim their support of less spending providing the deductions are made from other special interests than their own. The country is full of experts at this special interest game.”

Satirically, Senator Proxmire proposes Golden Fleece awards for the worst example of wasteful spending. Here are a few of his selections: $180,000 for a study of the social behavior of the Alaskan black bear; $800,000 to find out why people fall in love; $100,000 to determine why rats, monkeys and humans clench their teeth; $15,000 was spent on a study of time taken to prepare breakfast. This was undertaken by request of restaurants led by the McDonald chain in their attempt to reduce cost of employees. $20,000 was spent to see what burning paper in the sky looked like. Then came $60,000 to find out how airline stewardesses got their jobs. It took $40,000 to investigate whether run-off from piles of cow manure on dairy farms caused pollution of ponds. A very much larger sum, $220,000, was spent to determine what was already known: That drivers of passenger cars consider the use of roads by trucks a highway menace. On top of that it took $300,000 to study the effect of truck size on drivers’ behavior.

Every department of government has been guilty of similar actions. The Office of Education used $250,000 to develop a program to enable college students to distinguish fact from fiction on TV, and ended with the conclusion it couldn’t be done. No more successful was the expenditure of $850,000 on what was from the beginning a highly questionable attempt to develop skills in young children for TV watching.

Anything that helps combat the nation’s alcoholic problem seems commendable, but one may resaonably question spending $100,000 to study the effect of alcohol on sunfish drunk to the gills. Spending several millions on study of rock samples from the moon may be partly justified, but at questionable expense; but less is the expenditure of millions to produce histories of Space Agency projects including a long tome entitled The Administration History of NASA.

The Department of the Interior spent $140,000 for a wave-making machine in a Salt Lake City swimming pool. This sort of thing goes on inside the White House itself. The cost of White House consultants between 1968 and 1978 rose from $350,000 to a whopping $3,800,000. During the same period travel expenses for the staff tripled. Personnel in the White House, whose salaries ranged from $37,000 to $55,000 a year, doubled.

There are ironical touches to government spending. While the head of the Fuel Energy Commission was urging everybody to save fuel, he spent $100,000 flying over the country in a fuel-gulping government jet. During the 365 days of 1978, the so-called VIP’s in all branches of the federal government used government planes for a total cost of $52 million.

Now let us take a look at government entertaining – parties and dinners. Last year Congress itself led the list by social spending of $70 million. Their excuse, as well as that of other lavishly entertaining departments was that it was necessary to maintain the dignity of the U.S. Moscow or London or Paris must not be permitted to put on better dinners that the U.S.

On such occasions, only the gifts to visiting dignitaries amounted to more than $100,000. Here are a few items: Reception for the Minister of Defense of Israel, $4,000; reception for Canada’s Defense Minister, $3,500; reception for the recognition of secretarial aides in the Department of Defense, $7,POO; honoring the Corps of Army Attaches, $6,500; entertaining the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Kuwait, $4,100; conducting the Air Attaches’ golf tournament, $3,400.

Taken one at a time those expenditures seem small in comparison with the whole federal budget of more than six hundred billion dollars a year. It is the astonishing total that the several thousand of them reach that annoys us – certainly more than $50 billion.

Another cause of concern is what-are called overrun expenses – projects that cost more than the money appropriated for them. In 1978 Congress appropriated $13 billion for public works. The approved projects actually cost $27 billion, an overrun of more than 100 percent. $125 million was appropriated to build the new Dirksen Senate Building. It cost more than $200 million. In the same year, of the $530 billion appropriated to help the nation’s needy, only $115 billion ever reached needy families. In fact much of the money was spent in ways that actually hurt poor people, such as bulldozing away their homes.

Senator Proxmire says: “The majority of the country is with us in sentiment to stop such waste. But the sentiment has not been organized. It is underactive and stumbling, about as effective as a bottlefly’s hiccough. If we are going to have action it must come from concerted, active citizen demand.

In all of this we haven’t said a word about the huge expense of the government’s bailing out of bankrupt cities, and even of bankrupt corporations like Lockheed and Chrysler. In Maine we are all too aware of the losses sustained by our state’s guarantee authority – like the sugar refinery fiasco in Aroostook. By the end of the latest fiscal year in June 1980, the federal government’s guaranteed loans had reached the staggering sum of $372 billion.

It is all a minor part of a very severe national problem. At the present rate of growth, our national debt will soon exceed a trillion dollars, a sum totally beyond the comprehension of any citizen. In dollar bills, what would a trillion dollars look like. No one really knows, but it would surely be a pile higher than Mt. Katahdin.

The most casual reader of history knows that while many factors contribute to a nation’s fall, there was always one sure warning of coming disaster – persistent spending of what the nation did not have.

Year: 1980