Mucka not mocha!

Every time I order a mocha it’s the same. The first time I had mocha I was in America. I’d barely heard of it before (being a country bumpkin from lil’ ol’ Engalund) and was I quite delighted; you mean there’s a coffee I can drink without scowling? And it’s full of chocolate?

I drank so much mocha in America. I miss America. I pine. I reminisce. I fantasise I’ll return. Oh God I miss America. I get sentimental, and to cheer myself up I order a mocha to remind myself of the old days; the six whole weeks of that year when I actually felt I really lived.

I pronounce it mowka, like the Americans do. After all, it’s their drink. You can find it everywhere in the states, not just three places in a city. I forget myself. After all, the English pronounce mocha “mokka” because that’s how the English would pronounce a word they didn’t know how to pronounce, after seeing it written on the page.

“What?”

“Mowka.”

“Mucka?”

“Huh? Oh. You mean Mokka.”

“Mucka.”

They have me trained now, to almost always ask for a mucka, so they don’t have to laugh at what a silly person I am.

I was in the classiest cosmopolitan café bar in a cinema this week. I ordered a mokka, commented to my friend, “I always want to say mowka. It just wants to come out that way.”

The barman laughed at me hysterically. Poor dumb blonde, she doesn’t know how to pronounce her words! “The weirdest one we ever had was moocher,” he informed me in consolation.

I did what I always do. I had a little laugh with him at my own expense.

Is this an English trait? Correcting people’s mispronunciations? I don’t seem to remember anyone doing it to me in the states. They were all far too busy having ecstasies over my posh British accent.

Culture can be so oppressive sometimes, so petty. All that anxiety for those who won’t conform!

But like King Canute fighting the waves, I’m STANDING MY GROUND. If I want to drink my mowka, like the rest of the world, I’ll drink my mowka.