Saturday, January 19, 2013

There is no 'i' in team

But there is Me,  just look closer.

Team is another one of these Anglo words you find around here. And since the often heard "there is no I in team" is not readily transferable, the "kein ich in Team" is just clunky, we looked at the word a little more closely.

And came up with "there is a Me, just not so obvious". Of course, any avid cornered Scrabble player could figure that one out.

We were very pleased when we saw the potential of our quip.

We can go borderline philosophical about the idea of the "team" in the workplace without making any argument beyond pointing at the letters "m" and "e".

Without batting an eye, we can pounce by telling the team builders and the HR specialists that ignoring the "me" in team is a recipe for failure.

Or what if we take it a bit further, say, in claiming that the people supervising the team are the embodiment of the "me"?

And we would accomplish exactly nothing with this outside of the confines of the English language.

Sweet.

Think about it for a second, and please note that there is a "we" in sweet.

[Update 11/2015] We found a German play on word for Team!
That's right. The German word for 'team' is 'Team', and someone came up with this gem: Toll, ein anderer machts. Which means something along the line "great, someone else does the work".

No comments:

Post a Comment