The youth in front of me in Starbucks said: ‘Can I get a tall skinny latte and a blueberry muffin?’ The girl behind the counter said: ‘No problem.’
A sign that the language has changed is when foreign phrase books give sentences that it would never occur to me to use. It has gone past that now. An advertisement that Veronica showed me on the internet offers T-shirts with the words: ‘Quieres tomar un café?’ The English-language website explains that this means: ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’ It is not that I think ‘Can I get?’ is particularly rude. It’s just that it does not convey the thought I have when I want to buy a cup of coffee.
The ‘No problem’ response is more complicated. Most of the young people who work in cafés in London come from abroad.
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