also speaking of class markers, I actually saw a teenage girl in the "dame mas gasolina, papi" t-shirt about which I previously blogged

I've posted here numerous times about class in America; the Times' recent series on class tended to stick to quantifiable class markers among the people they profiled -- education, profession, access to health care.... But there was little note of the cultural cues we use to determine someone's class -- for instance, whether they had braces as a kid. (Young guy with bad teeth, in a suit? Usually also has the wrong shoes on with the suit).

Hanging out with some friends at the cowboy's house the other day, we were discussing favorite restaurants (or something), and it occurred to me that another big class marker -- and one of those points of urban snobbery -- is that upper-middle-class and urban people are supposed to know the phonetic systems of various foreign languages, even languages they do not speak. As in, a "cocina" is likely a Mexican restaurant, whereas a "cucina" is an Italian one, and we're all supposed to be able to pronounce "La Poule au Dents" in order to meet there, and we're all supposed to know enough Latin roots to sort of vaguely figure out what Romance-language restaurant names (and dishes, and occasionally band names -- Les Sans Culottes?) mean.

A high school friend from way down in the Carolinas (I forget which Carolina, but his family had a county named after them) told me about the county getting its first Mexican restaurant, and his grandmother mortifying him by ordering the fadge-itas.