Viewing Thread:
"Vocabulary"

How impressed are you by someones vocabulary, if someone was to make exactly the same point yet in a more 'artful' way would it impress you more, or can you see through the 'big words'?

I have a large vocabulary but why make it difficult for others to understand you? I also use a wide variety of slang which is fun but most people online dont really understand what they are laughing at so nobody tends to use much slang here.

People also presume if one uses less common words, then they're only attempting to be condescending or arrogant. I use slightly different vocabulary from my friends and one in particular gets annoyed, because she thinks I'm trying to be superior when these are the words that I have naturally developed into using. It really annoys me.

amandag wrote:
> i'm not impressed with long words - i would be more impressed if
> people spoke a different language.

So, being able to speak a foreign language impresses you, but someone who can speak english does not? To many people, much of the english language is completely alien to them, despite it being their first and often only language.

The other day I tried vainly to convince some people at work (accountants no less) that 'chicanery' is not a difficult and exotic word. You'd have thought I'd asked them to use a word from some bizarre Indian dialect as a password to one of their files.

To me it's an every day word.

The problem isn't 'big' words, either. It's just words which aren't common, and part of the 500 or so words that most people manage to get by using for most of their everyday lives. It's not a matter of how many consecutive syllables you can string together, it is, as the subject of the thread sugests, merely an issue of vocabulary, and the fact that the vast majority of people are extraordinarily limited in what they an offer or understand.

I think it's quite shameful. And how can one be fluent in more than one language when they only really have a rudimentary grasp of their primary dialect?

Borat wrote:
> Was that a poke at me, Sunshine?

I don't poke, I pinch :P
In another words no, I just didn't think you knew the meaning of the word brain.

Was that a poke at me, Sunshine?

Borat wrote:
> I would never use a word I didn't understand ...

Thats not true, look:

Borat wrote:
> brain

See...?

amandag wrote:
> i'm not impressed with long words - i would be more impressed if
> people spoke a different language.

Indeed I'd like to learn another language, still considering giving it a go, I so missed out when I spent 8 hours a day in me car ... could have learnt it on CD instead of killing my brain with dance music :)

> Do people who use long words always know what the mean?

I would never use a word I didn't understand ...

amandag wrote:
> At work loads of people use words that i don't know the meaning
> of.

You'll be surprised how many year 7s say that =P

i'm not impressed with long words - i would be more impressed if people spoke a different language.
Do people who use long words always know what the mean?
At work loads of people use words that i don't know the meaning of. i prefer to be clear, concise and to the point. Long words can seem to go round the point a bit

Err, different but similar thing is proper terms. I have to explain sciency words to my friends :)

And big words... I laugh at them =)