xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you’re okay.

  • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’ve had Americans ask me the meaning of words I’ve used in a sentence. Like “what’s tranquil?” (I’m non-native.)

    I blame reading.

      • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        English speakers can really enhance their vocabulary when they know French. English does have a lot of French words that most people don’t use anymore but if you use them, your vocabulary becomes off-the-charts intellectual.

        • Pseudo-intellectual. A clear communicator uses the simplest, precise word that has the precise meaning they intend, reaching most commonly for the Germanic vocabulary unless they need the subtler shades of meaning from the Latinate. A pseudo-intellectual uses Latinate vocabulary to conceal what they’re actually saying or to intimidate people who aren’t as comfortable on the Latinate side of the fence. It’s a form of intellectual bullying that, to my mind, makes the person using it look insecure (not to mention likely dishonest).

          A good communicator’s motto should be “eschew gratuitous obfuscation (see what I mean?)”.

      • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        Anglo-language conversations plus Franco-vocabulary utilization, remains a veritable trick code

        De rien

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I once did an English language vocabulary test that yielded that I’m amongst the top 0.01% in terms of amount of English-language vocabulary.

      English is not my mother tongue and I still and often make mistakes in the use of “in”-vs-“on” or even in certain forms of past tense.

      However I read a lot in English, in various areas of knowledge, plus it turns out lots of really obscure words in English are pretty much the same as a the word in some other language I know or even pretty much the Latin word, so when I didn’t know that was the English word for that, I can often guess the meaning.

      All this to say that I absolutelly agree with you that it’s a reading thing, plus at more specialized language level, the “knowledge of foreign languages” also has some impact.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Got called a rich kid for knowing the word “carafe.” Pretty sure I learned it from a book, my parents didn’t have carafe with mountain spring water or some shit around the house.

        • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          The term “carafe” puts me in mind of a crystal glass container of between half a litre and two litres of volume for wine or water. What is it in relation to coffee? The glass bowl the coffee drips into in one of those dripping coffee makers?

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Exactly that. I picture it as one of those big jugs on an industrial coffee machine with the black or orange plastic to indicate if it has caffeine

      • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I learned that word from my dad when I was a child. we kept a carafe in the refrigerator designated for water. It’s a wine carafe but can put anything in it. My dad was an alcoholic so he had a wine carafe and a lot of other alcohol-related accoutrements like beer steins.