No dahling, it’s ‘vahse’

These vases came over from America with all our stuff. Somewhere over the Pacific they became vaaahses, just like the databases turn into dahtabases and tomatoes formally don their royal tomahto-ness.

Maybe the blue one, a souvenir from the Van Briggle pottery in Colorado Springs, can pull it off to pass as a vahse. But for the other two, bought in thrift shops, although they’re still pretty and useful, maybe they’re just vases.

There are a bunch of things like that that we can say to fit in, to sound less like the well-scrubbed Kansas hick in an old movie. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. But it’s something we notice constantly… to say certain things the way that feels natural is starting to sound a little bit off. That’s a long way from saying we are adopting Kiwi accents, but it’s definitely true that we don’t talk like we did four years ago.

Oh, and… look at the pretty snapdragons!