s01e01 Monica: You wanna spell it out with noodles?

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 spelling with noddles a thing in America? Or do they spell with stones and leaves and whatever is handy too? Why spelling something vulnerable isn’t big for the other languages too?

Firstly let’s get the noodle part of a puzzle out of the way. When I first approached this joke I thought of such popular kid thing like Alphabet soup. Maybe in Monica’s head noodles and Alphabet soup are just like potato and potato? Meaning both are pasta and therefore can share the quality of spelling words? And the joke simply refers us to the time when Monica and Paul were kids… and would make words in a spoon while eating Alphabet soup, like we all did. 

But than I remembered a scene from 2010 movie with Emma Stone called Easy A. Emma’s character while having a family lunch hesitates to pronounce a curse word. The curse word that earlier that day got her into principle’s office at school. Her parents are my dream parents and go about it playfully. They offer their daughter to spell the curse word with the peas on her plate, which she does! Thus I conclude it is not the noodles that are good for spelling out difficult truth for a kid in America. Any food would pretty much do! 

Okay why the food spelling then? Over decades of consuming American shows and movies I haven’t gotten used to many stones or leaves or pencils spelling. My guess is that the dinner date or a family lunch is such a perfect time to slow down… and talk to your loved ones about the stuff that really matters. And that is how I believe food spelling became a popular vehicle in the confession type of conversations. 

Yet I still get something not. Why hasn’t spelling ever been present in my own life growing up? When I would need some truth from a kid I might… offer to look the other way. Or promise to act really calm in response. Or I would do guesses that are out of proportion. So the real answer would feel less huge for the my partner in conversation. But why unlike Monica I wouldn’t think of a spelling as a way to defuse the energy out of expected confession?

I think the answer lays in the language itself. Modern English, being born out of a many other languages is famously hard to read. It is not enough to know the alphabet and a handful of rules and do the reading as a pro. Sometimes it takes a minute or a google to guess how the new word reads. That is why Spelling Bee the spelling competition for kids is such a big thing in US. In many other languages those spelling competitions wouldn’t make sense. So it is the built-in difficulty of reading that naturally invites English speakers to share difficult truths via noodles and other types of food. 

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I'd love to hear your take on it

Katia