A small story:

So I'm driving to do a few errands and I'm listening to @lexiconvalley and quietly lamenting my monolingual, if that, status and a thought occurs to me:

"I also speak Los Angeles."

As Professor McWhorter might describe it, LA is a creole language.

Now, I will grant you that the comparison isn't exact; we who created the language didn't come here as enslaved people.

(Maturely does not make "Working for Ellen DeGeneres" joke)

But LA is definitely the language at the edges of several cultures. Take for example, the following interaction, which I happen to know drives @RadioFreeTom to seething fits:

PERSON A: Thank you.
PERSON B: No problem.

"That," Tom rages, "IS NOT THE ANSWER TO THANK YOU."

True.

Not in English, anyway.

In Spanish, your response would be "De nada," which is literally, "Of nothing." LA the city might as well be the northernmost state in Mexico. When you speak LA, there's a good chance you're speaking a little Spanish.

And then sometimes LA the language is just purely its own beast, sounding like English but telling you something completely different than what we appear to be saying.

In you were born in LA and you drive, someone might ask you how far something is.

Will you describe it in miles?

No, you will not, because you have no idea how many miles away something is. Miles are irrelevant. You may as well ask us how many cubits away it is.

Will you describe it in blocks?

Very, very, very rarely. *

90% of the time, you will describe distance in minutes.

"Well, that seems fairly straightf-"

There are only four distances in LA:

1. "Twenty minutes,"
2. "45 minutes,"
3. "About an hour and a half,"
4. "About three hours."

None of these are meant to be taken literally.

* You only describe things in blocks in this manner:

"It's a few blocks, you could walk there."

The implication, of course, being that you won't. You will, in fact, end up parking near the last place you were and walking.

This will not strike you as odd.

"20 minutes" means "It took 20 minutes once. It could take ten minutes, because everyone is working from home. It could take 55 minutes, because the city has decided to dust the 210. It will not be onerous, unless it is. If it is onerous, you are permitted to complain briefly."

You will not, however, be allowed to complain too much because you were only in the car twenty minutes.

"But, didn't you just say the trip probably wasn't twenty minutes?"

The trip was twenty minutes, no matter how long it took.

"45 minutes" is a warning bell. It will be unpleasant. You are crossing the city, possibly briefly driving through Palms, though it is nowhere near your destination. You will be on the 110 and it will be punitive. If you are travelling that distance for work, you'll be pitied.

If you are driving that distance for romance, people will laugh at you.

"Forty five minutes" is frequently the distance where we blame the victim:

"It took 45 minutes!"

"That'll teach you to take Western after 3 in the afternoon."

"About an hour and a half" can also be pronounced "God only knows." It's the distance we associate with leaving the county and we who speak LA pride ourselves on not leaving the county if possible because some nearby counties are very frightening.

We suspect, but cannot prove, that people in the Inland Empire have a taste for human flesh.

Despite it being in Ventura County, we view Santa Barbara as being in Los Angeles and will describe it as being "About forty five minutes away," which is true only for people who live in Thousand Oaks.

We do not care, because this is not about actual minutes.

Again, if we tell you something is "About an hour and a half" away, we do not mean 90 minutes. At peak traffic, it can take me 90 minutes to reach the beach but I would still describe the beach as being "about 45 minutes away."

If I say it's "About an hour and a half away," I'm telling you to get your affairs in order.

Finally, there is "About three hours," which means "Everything else."

Las Vegas?

About three hours.

San Diego?

About three hours.

San Francisco?

About three hours.

New York?

About three hours.

Guam?

About three hours.

Auckland?

About three hours.

"About three hours" means "There will be bathroom and gas breaks, you will get snacks, you will get all the way through this season of that true crime podcast, you will fight with a loved one and then you will make up and you might not be there yet."

You may not complain.

We warned you when we said "About three hours."

We have told you about the land. It is not our responsibility to also teach you our language.

De nada.

And now, THE AD! If you like these Small Stories, can I coax you into helping to support them? I promise to only lightly mock you if you take Western after 3 in the afternoon. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4846197