As time draws near to renew the stickers on our 1977
Ford Pinto, we’ve been giving some thought to switching to vanity
license plates.
So we logged onto the Illinois Secretary of State Web
site, which allows prospective personalized plate purchasers to check the
availability of their desired letter combination, and noticed the following
warning: “Do not use foreign words and obscene or offensive
combinations.”
Mi scusi? Last time we
checked, Illinois doesn’t have an official language. Besides, where
do you even draw the line between foreign and English words anymore?
“If it’s a word that the meaning of which
would be OK in English, then we’ll allow it in another language as
long as it’s a language that uses the same alphabet,” explains
SOS vehicle-services department director Ernie
Dannenberger.
The office employs use of foreign language
dictionaries, presumably to keep pendejos like us from pulling a fast one and requesting dirty
lingo in other tongues.
Maybe the Web should be more clear, Dannenberger
concedes — and oui agree.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2008.
