What with federal income taxes being due today, and with the Republicans and Democrats fighting over what to do about the deficit, I thought I’d put forth my modest proposal on what to do.
And that is to levy The “E” Tax.
I’m sure you’ve all seen businesses with names like
Ye Olde Booke Shoppe
What are all those extra Es doing in there? They’re not necessary—they are there just due to pretentiousness.
So let’s charge them for it: an extra $1,000 per “E”. There’s $3,000 right there.
And while we are at it, there’s an extra “p” in there, too. There’s another $1,000.
But we’re not done yet. What’s with “Ye” instead of “The”?
That is really just a transcription error. Old English (or should that be “Olde Englishe”?) used to use a letter called the “thorn” that looked like this:
Þ
It was used for the “th” sound. When transcribed, sometimes an error would be made and it would be transcribed as a “y” instead. Hence, “ye”, not to be confused with the other “ye”, an archaic plural of “you”.
To still use that is the ultimate in pretentiousness: put a $2,000 tax on that.
I suppose we could also put a tax on pretentious fonts, but I’ll leave that battle for another day.
So, what’s the take on “Ye Olde Booke Shoppe”?
$6,000.
But wait, there’s more.
What about pretentious subdivision names?
It used to be that neighborhoods had descriptive names: Italian Village. You know, the place where Italian immigrants first moved. Or then there is Wrigleyville in the area around Wrigley Field in Chicago. It described where you were without a bit of pretentiousness.
So, subdivisions with pretentious, misleading names get a $1,000 tax per house.
The subdivision that I live in is called “Countrywood”. OK, that’s fine. When it was being built, it really was (kind of) out in the country. And while it was mainly a farmer’s field, there were woods about.
But then, later, our builder upscaled his houses, and the new subdivision built right next to ours was “Barron’s Ridge”. $3,000, right there.
First, it’s built on an almost complete flat field. The only time is has anything resembling a ridge is when the neighbor parks his van on the street.
Next, there are no barons anywhere near central Ohio. That’s just an attempt to make the place sound ritzy.
And finally, there is no need for that extra “r” in “baron”. That’s there just to allow them to say “Oh, we don’t really mean baron“.
$3,000.
Now this the way to solve a tax problem.
Wow! I should suggest the idea to Russian legislators, with all those archaic and extraneous Ъ all around, just due to pretentiousness as you have put it. Like in БАНКЪ и КОММЕРСАНТЪ
My knowledge of Russian is pretty rudimentary, but my understanding is that the “hard sign”, твёрдый знак, is supposed to be used only when the preceding consonant is a soft-series consonant. Which neither the “к” in банк nor the “т” in коммерсант are.
So I find it pretty amusing that here we have Russia and the US: separated by a cold war; united in language pretentiousness.
Indeed our nations have much in common. Shame upon the politicians who sometimes try to alienate us.
Speaking about the твердый знак, “банкъ” is a pre-1917 standard spelling, while “банк” is Soviet spelling. So this spelling is sometimes used by those who hate the Soviet period of the Russian history, or want to emphasize their aristocratic descent or just pretend that their company is so old and traditionally established.
The old Russian orthography required “ъ” at the end of words ending in a hard consonant, being the remnant of a reduced vowel, a vestige of the Slavic open syllable. Quite useless IMHO, though the modern Bulgarians still use “ъ” as a vowel letter.