Ad Watch: why we take off and don't flap

Let's enjoy another Delta Airlines ad narrated by Donald Sutherland.

This one's called "Take Off: Why We Go," and I think they're trolling us now. 

In case you don't want to waste thirty seconds of your time watching an ad on purpose, here's what we got: on top of blurry footage of bands and blotches of color rushing by, Donald Sutherland steadfastly refuses to flap. It's almost heroic.

What’s happening here is not normal; it’s extraordinary.
Two hundred and nineTy-one people, three hundred and fifTy tons,
one hundred and eighTy-six miles per hour. 

(Blah blah blah. A bunch of heavy breathing about pioneers and covered wagons and the wonderfulness of people who sit on planes.) 

EighTy thousand people now, on the ground, in the air, engines on.
Because there is no stop in us, or you. Only go.

In case you're new here, those capital Ts are my way of representing what we (yes, all of us) call aspirated Ts. This is the sound you hear at the beginning of a word like Tuesday. It's very different from the sound we spell with a t, but which we (well, we Americans) pronounce in a word like water. That sound—the one in water—is a flap, and it's what we would expect to hear in the word eighty. But not in a Delta ad. No, sir and/or madam.

Because that would fail to... It would fail to, well... I don't know why they can't do that, but they can't. Like many others, they seem to believe that flapping sends the Wrong Signal. It indicates a lack of precision and maybe even a lack of being able to fly airplanes. It's all very strange.  

Addendum (9/28/15): I didn't include this in the partial transcript of the ad above, but there's another peculiar thing in here, beyond Donald Sutherland's infuriating refusal to flap. At the 0:20 mark:

You're not sure what's on the other side to that time after you land...

If you're anything like me, you're thinking, "Wha?!" On the other side... to something? Did the completely standard English phrase "the other side of something" change when we weren't looking? (But we're always looking!) I simply don't believe that anyone else anywhere has ever said something like, "The remote? Oh, it's on the other side to the couch." Why are advertisements so weird?

Ad Watch: no flap left behind

And here's another one. On the heels of the "rotten kitten" ad comes this spot, known in the biz as "No Bag Left Behind."

The script:

Traveling can feel like one big mystery.
You’re never quite sure what is coming your way.
Though when you’ve got an entire company who knows that the fewest cancellations and the most on-time flights are nothing if we can’t your things there, too…
It’s no wonder more people choose Delta than any other airline.

Which... fine. I mean, I'm not sure it makes much sense. (When there's a company that knows it needs to get passengers' luggage where it's supposed to go, it's no wonder Delta is the most... popular airline?) The real issue here—surprise!—is that nonflapped t in "You're never quite sure whaT is coming your way."

What TIS coming your way?

What is the significance of this nonflapped t? All this time I've been assuming it's deployed to convey some combination of authority and precision, a kind of stand-in for British propriety. Which, of course, is silly. How does speaking in an artificial, stilted way convey any of those things? And if they wanted a British spokesperson, why didn't they just hire one?

Of course, Donald Sutherland has made a career out of this kind of phony-baloney o-ver-e-nun-ci-a-tion (see also Fishburne, Laurence), so why not him? 

Ad Watch: the rotten kitten

Before I quit this blog and devote myself full-time to the study of flapping (and the denunciation of flap refuseniks), let's look at this commercial that demonstrates a high degree of flaplack.

Here's the script:

I was getting into my car one morning when I heard…
<meow>
It sounded like a kitten was trapped in my car, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Neither could my husband. And neither could the fire department.
<meow>
We couldn’t lure it out. So we decided to drive very slowly to Les Schwab.
The team took my car apart—“Oh! Here he is”—and rescued the kitten. Today’s he’s alive and well and spoiled rotten.

When you watch this thing, the word kitten practically attacks you through the screen. (That is, kiTTen, with that t aspirated, resulting in a pronunciation that is thoroughly at odds with the woman's American English. She also pronounces rotten as roTTen.)

As always with the things I dredge up here, there is plenty of ordinary flapping—I was geDing into my car one morning, I couldn’t find iD anywhere, so we deciDed to drive very slowly—along with the weirdness.

Now, to be fair (and obsessively specific), this is a matter of too-much-aspiration instead of not-enough-flapping. Kitten and rotten don't have flaps; they have unreleased t's and syllabic n's. But I think the impulse that leads to roTTen and kiTTen is the same as the impulse that causes people to run screaming from flaps.

But when the film crew was recording the story, what did they think of that nonstandard kitten and rotten? Was it intentional? Did they ask her to say those words that way? (Why would they do that?) I tried to find other audio of the woman whose testimony the commercial was built around, but I couldn't. I dug up stories on local TV about the story, but I couldn't find her flapping or not flapping. I am assuming she doesn't typically avoid flaps. But who knows? And more to the point, who cares?

Ad Watch: vomiting and linguistic insecurity

Auvi-Q (terrible name) is an epi-pen manufactured by Sanofi (also not a great name). This isn't another post about questionable naming practices. Instead, it's about my other hobby horse: Americans' linguistic insecurity and those fascinating flaps! (If you're new here, a flap is a speech sound that seems to give some Americans fits. Here is my first post about flaps. This one was good, too.)

In the ad, a "doctor" explains all the benefits of the product and cautions us about its side effects. It's all standard stuff. Like a typical American, she flaps when flapping is expected, giving us the following over the course of her spiel (I'm using my same-old system for representing flaps [D] and aspirated t's [T]):

• auDo-injector
• supporDive therapy
• aD increased risk
• ouDer thigh
• heart-relaDed symptoms
• sweaDing
• anxieDy
• diabeDes

All of these are garden-variety pronunciations in American English.

But then, toward the end of the spot, she throws us a curveball, cautioning us that the product can cause... vomiTing. Not vomiDing, the way the word is typically pronounced, but vomiTing, the way it's never pronounced. Not in the US, at any rate.

So, why? Where did this come from? Is it possible the TV doctor did this by accident? (Have you ever pronounced a word that way by accident?) Was it deliberate? (Why on earth would you call attention to vomiting this way? Were things seeming too American-casual and thereby failing to inspire I-must-ask-my-physician-about-this-medicine confidence?) What does it all mean?

For some outrageous reason, this ad is not available on YouTube. So, you'll have to content yourself with watching it at this link.

(If anyone out there can help me wrestle Blogger into line, I would really appreciate it. Getting stuff formatted the way I want it—with consistent fonts and type sizes—seems impossible, all the "convenient" controls notwithstanding. I swear this is going to drive me nuts. It doesn't seem to matter what font or type size I select—Blogger will make things look however it likes.)