Spelling words out with noodles? Is that a thing?
Monica and Paul's date seems to be going pretty smoothly. They laugh, they trade stories. Paul even shares how hard his divorce was on him. But suddenly Paul pauses in the middle of the story and can't seem to go on. Monica is dying to know what is it Paul had in mind.
Paul: Ever since she walked out on me, I, uh...
Monica: What?..... What, you wanna spell it out with noodles?
Is it common for Americans to spell things out with noodles when embarrassed to say something out loud?
At first I thought Monica's idea for Paul to spell the rest of the sentence with noodles comes from an alphabet soup for kids. Have you ever ate one? It contains all the letters from As, Bs and Cs all the way to its Xs, Ys and Zs. The letters are made of pasta, as noodles are. Sometimes kids would play with the soup, spelling words out.
But after I found this clip from a movie called Easy A (2010), I have changed my mind:
See the main character a teenage girl Olive is sharing a story of why she has gotten into trouble at school. And now is pausing because she feels embarrassed to pronounce the bad word.
But Olive's parents are a creative and fun type folks, so they suggest their daughter to spell the word with the peas on her plate. Olive loves the idea and does exactly that.
Spelling things that are hard to say is not only limited to food-tools. It could be anything really, like sticks, cords, stones. I couldn't find any examples of non-food spelling in the movies or shows though. But that's I believe because the hard conversations require a real slow down of pace. And meal times naturally provide us with the pause, that helps share the truths that are bigger than a bite size.
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это намек на noodles сделаные в виде букв алфавита, какой ребенок не выложил бы из них слова прямо на обеденном столе?
ReplyDeleteThat is right. But in movie "Easy A". There was a situation, when Olive felt ashamed of saying the bad word out loud. And she was spelling it with pies on her plate. That is why I thought it might be the thing children in the USA been tought to do or whatever)
ReplyDeletegood explanation ,, I would chat with you for hours about friends lol
DeleteДумаю, это спонтанная шутка Моники. Слишком уж вдумчиво Пол размешивал спагетти))
ReplyDeleteНо, действительно, может быть, мы чего-то не знаем, и есть еще какие-то корреляции.
Probably it's so. But let's look into it. Maybe we will find another culture/linguistic treasure indeed!
Delete
ReplyDeleteBlackWing was saying that Monica suggests to spell it with alphabet noodles. But I am not sure it is the case, because you can clearly see his bowl. It is normal long noodles there.
So I am sticking to a theory that kids are been culturally exposed to such way of saying things that aren't easy to say out loud.
But I am open for other theories.