Barnsley has 3 Greggs. Now, don't get me wrong, Greggs is an incredible business, however, it's a shame that the business which thrives the most at times of recession is a purveyor of greasy pastries.
With this high horse, judgmental perspective, imagine my delight when I saw a healthy food established having opened right next door to one of the town's stalwart pasty dispensers.
However, if I'm anal about a healthy lifestyle, I'm twice as anal about the use of language.
This new shop is called 'Gud 2 Eat'.
I can remember how risque Toys 'R' Us once seemed with it's abbreviation, especially when they placed the 'R' backwards. I remember the odd Chippy having a sign which confirmed that they sold Fish 'n' Chips but even these independent heroes still had the common courtesy to correctly use apostrophes to indicate the omitted letters.
Since the explosion of the mobile phone and 'txt spk' business have suddenly taken to using this trend in their names. 'Phones 4 U', 'Fish 4 Jobs' and so on. An acquaintance of mine runs a letting agency called '2 Let 2 U' and an estate agency called '4 Sales 2 U' (sorry Chris). All this could well be acceptable with the straight forward replacement of a number or single letter for a word in a 'clever' kind of way but changing 'good' to 'gud'????
It terrifies me (it probably shouldn't but it does) to think that we think so little of our language that we would just change the spelling of a word for the sake of saving a letter. I can't possible think of the benefit either. Did they think that healthy food and a reasonable standard of English would be just too much for the simple folk of Barnsley?
And what next? 'New Luk', 'Alfuds', 'Wikz', a sign outside a shop representing a grunt?
And where did I observe all this from? Subway. Make of that what you will...
No comments:
Post a Comment