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Name's not same with wrong vowel

A former schoolteacher with a passion for proper grammar wants a street name changed because of what she sees as a glaring error.

By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
Published August 20, 2005

LAND O'LAKES - Mary Jo Hand is a former elementary school teacher who picks out the typos in restaurant menus and cringes when someone says "a hour" instead of "an hour."

Her pet peeve: "I don't like to see "ice tea,' " Hand said. "It's supposed to be "iced tea.' "

So her antennae immediately went up when she saw the paperwork on her two lots in the upscale Caliente nudist resort, where she plans to build a home. The developer named her road Las Cabos Court.

It was like fingernails scratching a chalkboard.

"It's just a glaring error that ... no 5-year-old Spanish-speaking child would make," said Hand with a sigh, who writes instructional materials in English for elementary students from her Tampa home.

Remember the first rule of Spanish 101? With few exceptions, Spanish nouns ending in "os" take the masculine article "los," not the feminine "las."

Cabo is, in fact, a masculine noun that means an end or a stub. In geography, it describes a piece of land that juts out, like the Cape of Good Hope.

It should be Los Cabos Court, not Las.

Hand told her husband, Dennis, who mentioned it to the homeowners association. That group agreed to ask county officials to correct the street name.

Fixing a mixed-up vowel is no trivial matter, however. It requires an act by the highest level of local government: the County Commission.

The developer picks the street name, said Frank Palmer, the project specialist in charge of plats and street names for Pasco County government. Officials sign off on it as long as it doesn't duplicate an existing name. Palmer said they don't check for proper spelling or good grammar.

"If you choose to misspell the word "oak,' " he said with a chuckle, "we'll just live with it."

Because commissioners approved the Caliente plat in 2002 with Las Cabos Court, changing the name requires their blessing, he said.

The commission will consider the change at its Tuesday meeting, which starts at 1:30 p.m. at the historic courthouse in Dade City. If the change is approved, officials will put up a new street sign and update the county databases.

The change would affect about 40 property owners along the quarter-mile road. Palmer said he heard from one objector who said, "It's been that way for so long, leave it."

True, residents would have to update their driver's licenses and mailing addresses, but Hand said that's a small price to pay for good grammar. She admits she can be "a picky person" about such things, but who wants to live on a street with a typo?

"We really want to fix it because it grates on the nerves of anyone who knows any Spanish or speaks any Spanish," she said.

Bridget Hall Grumet covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is bhall@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 20, 2005, 01:29:02]