This new series of Dunkin Donuts commercials offers us the opportunity to order a delicious coffee beverage without being forced to wade through a bunch of overly-voweled European foppery. On the surface the chance to order a latte in English might seem like just what the doctor ordered, but they are ignoring the fact that the word latte is, in fact, unabashedly Italian. Not to mention that it’s made with steamed milk, for Mary’s sake. Can I get three Splendas and Celine Dion’s Greatest Hits with that? Come on Dunkin Donuts! Just sell me a good old cup of Joe with a spoonful of dirt and a punch in the throat like granddad used to make.
That commercial is so last year. (Seriously. It’s really old.)
Yay! Xenophobia in a donut shop! Wait a minute…latte is English? What’s that word again? Half-caf. What kind of English is that? Hmm…I’m just not going to expand my narrow vocabulary because that would be too much like going back to school where I barely passed my language requirement. Don’t even ask me what I got in English. Last year when my husband took me to an expensive four-star where the menu was prix fixe, I ended up crying in the bathroom; the stress was just too great.
I should probably just stick to that All-American Great, Dunkin’ Donuts, where I can get my latte with a croissant sandwich and an eclair for desert.
That was the first thought I had when I saw that commercial; they make a big thing out of being able to order coffee at Dunkin Donuts without having to speak “Fritalian” and then it turns out to be an ad for their latte.
I’m not a coffee drinker, so most of what I know about what they’re parodying is from what I see on TV and read about here (people complaining about being forced to say “venti” when they want a large, or being in line behind people who can’t decide what they want to order). But it all seems rather silly to me.
My wife used to work for a law firm that employed waiting staff for meeting rooms. The head bloke when taking people’s orders always said “So, you wanna glass of milk, not a coffee?” when someone ordered “a latte”. Loudly.
Bah. I have hemorrhoids older than that commercial.
It is silly. The only people who “force” customers to use company-designated terminology for sizing are stupid people. If you can communicate with me in a way I can understand, well then, that’s all that needs to be said. I worked for that company DD is parodying in that commercial and I never corrected customers who ordered a “large.” However, when calling the order to the barista, we were required to call it correctly (with the correct size phrasing) and sometimes customers assumed that I was correcting them, which is dumb because I obviously understood what they wanted if I called the drink correctly to the barista.
Here’s the thing. “Large” is subjective and varies from place to place. “Venti” is actually specific, although “grande” and “tall” are not. It only makes sense if you realize that the Venti size came later on (due to the American penchant for “super-sizing” everything) and initially “grande” was once the largest size. The only solution is to stifle creativity and branding by referring to every size by their actual unit of volume. Which was perfectly fine with me if customers wanted to order that way, but I’m ambivalent about branding methods.
I was going to start a thread on this very thing, these commercials piss me off as much as having to order a venti, grande or, meenie or whatever the small one is at $tarbuckets. Plus the whole ‘MY MOUTH CAN’T AFFORD THESE WORDS’ song, which snuck in before I could reach the remote to hit the mute button will stick my in my head until I die.
Screw 'em both, I’m going to Caribou.
Meh. These days latte is about as Italian as SpaghettiOs.
How would the customer know if you called out their order correctly, if they didn’t understand the lingo to begin with?
If these words are not English, feel free to provide the English words for them.
They are just as much English words as spaghetti, taco, and sushi, in stark contrast to grande, venti and Frappuccino. Those are either foreign language words with perfectly workable English versions, or made up words intended to be “European” sounding.
You can blame They Might Be Giants for that. They have been doing the jingles for these quirky DD commercials for a couple of years now.
They’ve also seeped into childrens’ television, too. I can’t let my daughter watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for fear of “Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog…” going through my head for the rest of the day. Great, there it goes. :smack:
They also do the theme song to that show and the theme to Higglytown Heros. So stay away from the Disney channel between 6 am and noonish.
I’m still trying to figure out the etymology of the word “Dunkin”; did the company originally sell their donuts with coffee, with the expectation that you would be “dunking” the donuts in the java?
Not to pile on to the “this is a really old ad” replies, but linky to a post from over a year ago mentioning this ad.
Or, more likely, it indicates that the doughnuts are fried (dunked in boiling oil.)
As has been pointed out many times in the Starbucks lingo debates, Starbucks employees used to correct customers on the Starbucks lingo if they ordered a small, medium or large.
True, not all of them did this, but I happened often enough that I disliked going into Starbucks. But now they’ve stopped and I can enjoy my Frappucino without the quarterlife crisis victim beyond the counter acting like a snot to me.
They used to sell donuts that were shaped for dunking in coffee – they had a little donut handle to hold on to.
“Dunking” a doughnut has always referred to a brief immersion (usually in coffee) immediately before the bite. (It comes from the Old High German word “dunkon”, meaning “soak,” and denoted baptism before it was applied to sweets.)
If raw dough noughts were merely “dunked” in oil they would be unfit for consumption.
…and pretentious terminology is the least of Starbucks’ offenses; I’d be happy to order a “GreatGooglyMoogly” or a “Petipiccolo” coffee if it didn’t taste like it was made with a can of MGB that survived a warehouse fire.
Yeah, those were the days …
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Damn you, Nutty Bunny!!