Your morning pseudo-asthma attack

[flemmings]

veleda_k's comment in an otf_w entry about words:

I consider myself fairly well-read

Ok. I consider myself a purple walrus. goo goo g'joob

Tripping over that at 6 in the morning is, ya know, unexpected. But coming after this entry at metaquotes, I begin to have hope for the human race. Even if there's some confusion between baklava and balaclava there that I can't parse.

Comments

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

mattybee claims to be born in 1988. That makes her 20.

I'm sure I knew what vainglorious means by the time I was 20.

That makes another purple walrus, no? The youths of today :(

Personally, my knee-jerk reaction on seeing an unfamiliar word is go the google/dictionary.com route. I still find one or two such words, once a month =P

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I either look the word up, dismiss it as a scientific term, or (most frequently) mutter 'Goddamn academics, speak English.' Carceral? Nomological? Hypostasized? Sorry, I don't have enough Greek for the last two.

All from here (http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm). Which proves that what works for the fuzzy allusive French style will not work in English ie you are not Derrida so don't try to talk like him, twit.

[joasakura.livejournal.com]

Nomological? Don't be silly. That means "pertaining to the study of eating habits of LOLCats." :)

OM NOM NOM

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

I think life would be rather dull if we were all forced to use the vocabulary of the average -- er, "well-read writer-type" -- 20 year old.

The pronunciation of "visage" is considered French-like? I would expect a "French" pronunciation to be with an -AZH type sound at the end, rather than -IJ. That "a" is practically swallowed. I suppose it *might* sound high-falutin' if the tone rose on that final syllable and it sounded like the Brooklyn take on "vase."

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

If you don't know French I think it'd be impossible to arrive at the correct spelling of visage from its English pronunciation. An acute ear might pick up the a-not-really-i sound, but most people don't have acute ears.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Oh dear ... oh dear ... I better stop my 8-soon-to-be-9 year old girl from using the dictionary then! So that she's in keeping with being an'average person' - mwahahahaha! I'm feeling evil so I laugh!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

She can't be the poster's 'average person' because she's the offspring of reading parents, living in a multilingual environment, and getting her vocabulary from something other than television. That point about popular kids and adolescent series having dumbed-down language was spot on. There's this to be said for Harry Potter- it introduced the readers of Berenstein Bears and Sweet Valley High to a slightly wider vocabulary.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

There's this to be said for Harry Potter- it introduced the readers of Berenstein Bears and Sweet Valley High to a slightly wider vocabulary.

But perhaps only if they didn't read the Americanized version which changed all those strange words like 'philosopher' so kids could understand them. Never mind that the philosopher's stone is an actual bit of mythology with broader meaning outside of Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone isn't.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I know for sure that the Americans didn't change 'Ron ejaculated' because all the 12 year olds at heart were having a field day with it.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

AHahahahahhahaha!
Okay, I remember that. XD

Now I'm curious as to whether the average person has a better vocabulary when it comes to sex-related words than they do for non-sex related words.

[joasakura.livejournal.com]

whenever I've learned parts of a foreign language, the dirty words are always first -.-

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

This is frustrating in Japanese because there /are/ no dirty words. 'Stupid 'down there' of a beard!' 'Damned arrogant 'that'-head!' 'Oh, 'do!' I hit my elbow!' Doesn't have the same ring at all.

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

I once had a fellow writer ask what susurrus meant, which I felt fairly self-explanatory from the sound of it. The fact that she asked, instead of getting out her dictionary.com, was the real problem. >.>

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Easier to ask than google? Good heavens.

Truly, when I get all 'good old days' and how nothing's as good as it was then, I remember what life was like pre-net and pre-google. The answer to (almost) anything I want to know is at my fingertips. (Getting a precise quote from copyright material being the only bummer.) It's heaven.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Very sad. The definition for any word is immediately accessible if you have a computer so why aren't vocabularies expanding? Granted, I read word origin dictionaries for fun but I use google and dictionary.com weekly because there will ALWAYS be a word I am unfamiliar with.

[joasakura.livejournal.com]

man. I have been chided more than once in conversation with the spouse's family to "talk like a normal person" because apparently I make with the fancy words too often -.-

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding snarky, I'm thinking that mattybee needs to hang out with more reader-type people and writer-type people who use dictionaries. The Internet is not only for porn!

*has mental image of bank-robbers shouting "Stick 'em up!" while trying to wipe the syrup streaming down their faces*