Digestively Speaking

I found this sign in Madrid. As any English-teacher-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands will tell you, “Fast Good” does not really work grammatically. It’s a pair of adjectives, and adjectives are in the world to modify nouns. Without a noun, an adjective doesn’t really have a job. It’s just sitting there on its butt. Seeing this sign, an English-teacher-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands might ask, What is fast and good? A fast good what? What the hell do they sell here, anyway? Ethical motorbikes? A Spaniard with a little knowledge of English, on the other hand, would probably know exactly what is sold here: fast food. How would they know that? Because of pronunciation issues. The sound the double-o makes in our “good” does not exist in Castilian, so Spaniards will often pronounce it “gude.” Meaning that “Fast Good,” on the lips of a Spaniard, can work as a twist on “fast food.” All of which is to say that in this establishment you can find fast food that, if there is truth in advertising, is good.

Incidentally, in Spain fast food of the Burger King sort is known as comida basura, or “trash food.” That’s two nouns, which shouldn’t really work either, but does. (Linguistically, at least. Digestively speaking, “trash food” maybe does not work so well.) Anyway, we do the same thing, with “junk food.”

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.