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Robo-Cop

(Eric Shansby)

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Me: An umlaut. Those two little dots that make German words sound really scary. Like, if you wrote "Santa Claus" with umlauts over the "a's," he would sound like the patron saint of little Nazi children. Sänta Cläus.

Woman: Okay, so, M-a, then ...

Me: You can forget the dots. Just put an "e."

Woman: Okay.

Me: M-a-e-s-t-r-o-en-yay

Woman: Excuse me?

Me: En-yay. A tilde. It is that squiggly thing above the "n." It's Hispanic in origin but sounds like "nyih," like my Yiddish-speaking grandma, complaining. She did that a lot. She was about 4-foot-11 and 250 pounds and wore shiny housecoats. She looked like a Hershey's Kiss. En-yay.

Woman: I do that just with an "n"?

Me: Okay. So, M-a-e-s-t-r-o-ñ, then an "o," then an exclamation point, then ...

Woman: I'm sorry?

Me: Exclamation point. It's an alveolar click. It is common to my ancestors from the Hadzabe people of East Tanzania. They live by hunting small antelopes and baboons. The strings on their bows are made from giraffe tendons.

Woman: What is your Visa or Mastercard number?

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