Maybe it's too fast and complex for you.. Yeah, he uses posh words and rare terms but that's just one part of the act. It's a really nice twist on the other wise dumped down comedy. You compare a british and murikan cursing and the vocabulary is highly in the favor of the old UK punk...

Another good brit comedian is Tim Minchin, he has great vocabulary and some form of grace in his way of relaying information to another humanbeing. Both fellows makes people think and i like that.

As non-native english speaker, i enjoy good set of new words... Sometimes i wonder why 99,999% of the stuff i see on tv uses a lot of same words over and over to explain something that could be described with one word more accurately.

Personally (American, btw), I find a lot of things that technically may be the same phonetically, I nonetheless pronounce slightly differently depending on the spelling. For instance, the 'f' sound in, say, philanthropic, I pronounce slightly differently. It's not something I could put into writing really, but when spelled with a "ph" I hold that sound slightly longer, it's a little breathier, and don't press my teeth against my lip so much or so abruptly, as I would were it spelled with an 'f.' A linguist would probably have a better vocabulary to describe this, but it's also the same for 'c' when it makes an 's' sound. There are many other examples as well. Another, off the top of my head is "can't." Were it spelled with an 'k', the 'a' sound would be more abrupt than when I pronounce it's proper spelling. "Ake" I would pronounce slightly differencly from "ache". It's subtle, but the 'ch' sound does make it in there.

Maybe this is just me, and all things being equal, I would prefer simplified spellings, but I nevertheless pronounce things with a subtle difference depending on how they're spelled.

People love to use the analogy that weapons bans are the same as reasonable limitations on your 1st amendment rights. They use arguments like "You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater", "You can't Slander", etc. but there is a big difference.

An assault weapons ban basically equates to "you may not own this item" the restrictions on 1st Amendment rights say "you man not use a word in this very limited list of situations".

If they were truly equal then the "reasonable" restriction on your 1st amendment right would be "You may not EVER use the word FIRE. Not in a crowded theater, not at home, not at work, not ever. Remove it from your vocabulary and we will not teach it to people who learn the language in the future."

No one would find that reasonable and everyone would fight to protect their right to use the word "fire" in safe, appropriate conversation.

Now lets take that and reverse it. Let's apply what everyone says are reasonable restrictions on our 1st ammendment rights and apply them to our 2nd ammendment. If you did that then you would havesomething along the lines of the following: "You may own the gun but you may not use it in these very limited list of situations".

Oh wait a minute! That's what we currently have. "You may own your gun but you may not use it to rob a store, murder someone, threaten someone, etc."

I am not trying to convince everyone that my side is right. I am just pointing out that you need to be careful when you start restricting ANY constitutionally guaranteed right. Take the restrictions that you think are fair and apply them equally to any other right that you have and see if they still sound "Reasonable".

megagaltastic: adj. (mega - gall'-tastik) characterized by an extensive vocabulary.

I totally agree with everything in your statement. It's also worth noting that there is more to dancing than stringing together a bunch of moves.

However, arts really do stagnate due to lack of innovation. I've been watching breakdancing for years, and yeah, it's possible to be impressed with what they are doing athletically while simultaneously being unimpressed with what they are doing artistically.

I'm sure there is other dancing that has a more limited vocabulary, but breakdancing feels particularly limited in that many moves can't flow together, and most start from a standing position and end on the floor. Each move takes several seconds and is often very physically demanding. All of this puts extra emphasis on the move itself rather than a series of moves over a period of time that you see with most other dance. And it's why after seeing it done so many times, I wish that someone would get a little more creative and try and do something new.

Yeah 1:38, awesome, seen it many times.

Every English poet uses the same 26 letters?

I think we stretched this far enough. I suppose the point is there is there is more to dancing than the novelty of a move you haven't seen before. Break dancing isn't exactly alone in having a "vocabulary" of moves and I don't think its the most limited either.

If breakdancing is like speaking, then they *really* need to increase their vocabulary.

In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
I think that RB's humour has a place and this kind of platform is where it belongs. He uses his extensive vocabulary to confuse the fuck out of them and wraps it up in a childlike silliness which is completely non-threatening. Best way to get an interview out of wankpiles like this. He started off as an interviewer, and I've always enjoyed him as such, especially because underneath the inanity is a very thoughtful and kind man.

*promote!

Thank you very much for the promote!

I think that RB's humour has a place and this kind of platform is where it belongs. He uses his extensive vocabulary to confuse the fuck out of them and wraps it up in a childlike silliness which is completely non-threatening. Best way to get an interview out of wankpiles like this. He started off as an interviewer, and I've always enjoyed him as such, especially because underneath the inanity is a very thoughtful and kind man.

*promote!

@bareboards2

Don't be sorry - I love long posts, but I'll reply with a relatively short one.

It's amazing that you mention the 'authoress/poetess' controversy because I had exactly that in mind earlier. Good riddance.

This may not have been the case forty years ago, but today I'm all but certain the reason 'girl' is a popular alternative to 'woman' is what is lost in the substitution - one syllable. It just rolls off the tongue more easily, whereas there's no similar incentive to switch 'boy' for 'man'. Sometimes it's that simple. I suspect your answer would differ, which is why I ask.
For myself, I call women women, but that's just the way my vocabulary has evolved; I'm not making a social statement by doing so and if there were a single-syllable alternative that appealed to me I would jump on it for the same reason as if we finally fixed the number seven and the letter W.

When I say these words have come up in the wrong contexts, I only mean when they're being used to refer particularly to age, "grown man", and there's no way to reconcile the substitution with the meaning of the sentence. Actually if this exercise has taught me nothing else over the last couple of days, it has exposed how infrequently we seem to use these words outside of pop music - and I'm not sure getting Katy Perry to sing 'California Women' would necessarily redeem the song as a feminist anthem.

I've wondered before if this sort of thing isn't a generational divide. Did your cohort become so used to arguing with your parents, who were actually sexist and racist and homophobic, while feeling you had to pay such careful attention to your own attitudes and vocabulary to avoid becoming like them; that you're not equipped to understand your children, for whom all that nonsense is so far behind and beneath them they don't bother to trammel themselves in the same way, when they try to explain why calling something 'gay' isn't a symptom of an underlying prejudice?
Nobody cares about that any more. None of the smart people anyway, who are themselves the most viciously oppressed and under-represented group in modern society.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the decline of gendered nouns and pronouns in general. It's such a bizarrely inappropriate way of communicating, the equivalent of appending "(...and by the way I'm talking about a male here)" to so many words that don't call for that detail.

Your two example sentences honestly, HONESTLY read exactly the same to me. This ought to be welcome news to you. It means the war is over, you can climb out of the trenches into the sunny world of a post-feminist future.

I'm running your experiment in a casual way, though as has been mentioned already those words come up too infrequently and in the wrong contexts to get much out of it so far. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed or assume bad faith if we report an underwhelming experience, but if we find these words as harmless as we say we do then that's all we can report.
Your 'radical' version is unsound because it involves projecting a specific attitude directly in to the experiment. Of course you'll find chauvinism - you put it there.

What do you think is the #1 reason 'girl' as a synonym for 'woman' is in more common usage than 'boy' for 'man'?

>> ^bareboards2:

I was reading Dan Savage's column yesterday (love that man, every bit of his potty mouthed being). The first sentence in one letter asking for advice was this:
"I'm a man who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great girl."
So if we do the experiment, the sentence now becomes:
"I'm a boy who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great woman."
gorillaman Stormsinger SevenFingers, do you honestly experience those two sentences exactly the same way? Are they conveying the same information?
Or are you startled by the experimental sentence? Is a different story being told about the relationship of these two people? Who has maturity? Who has, excuse me for using a charged word, more power? And with that power, do they have more responsibility?
Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

Oh, and, "Vagina Power" is an Atlanta based Public-access television show hosted by Alexyss K. Tylor, an African American woman. Aimed primarily for a female African American audience, the show mainly consists of Tylor speaking frankly and openly about various love and relationship issues in the African American community. Tylor is known for her very outspoken and in-your-face way of speaking, colorful vocabulary, and off-the-wall analogies. Alexyss also has a significant presence on YouTube, although a non-trivial portion of videos in this channel contain product endorsements or other material not entirely germane to her ideology.

Not a Christian TV show.

Fantastic. I hope she misses a car payment because of the ticket.

Stupid drivers put the public at risk. Driving is not a right it is a privileged.

I am annoyed at inattentive and overall overly aggressive assholes on the highway EVERYDAY !

I follow my boss who drives the "big rig", while I follow in a dodge 5500 loaded to the nuts with three thousand pounds of water towing a seven thousand pound trailer and people are just ignorant,non thinking fucking idiots. People who write their own rules when on the road should not be on the road.

()*&%$_)#*(&#$)(* NOW i AM uppity thinking about those dangerous assholes.

I just cant stand people who do not obey traffic laws. If everyone follows the same rules no one should get hurt, we get accidents because of the other asshats.

This dumb cunt should not be driving or should at least have to go to driving school. First time loser is indeed in my vocabulary. Take the boots to the bitch.

/end rant.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Right, cause the appropriate response to realizing your parent's home is in the process of burning to the ground is..?
I think you're confusing this girl's lack of swift-thinking and vocabulary..
for her genuine panic and shock over an uncontrollable situation.
>> ^budzos:
This is a pretty sad example of how kids/young people today are often incapable of engaging sincerely with actualy reality. This little idiot's house is burning down and she can't even have an honest reaction to it.



I've heard water does well against fire.

I know I probably spent more time playing with fire as a kid than most kids today, but surely some common sense should still exist? You can hear that she already has someone else in the house on the phone, presumably with 911 or the fire department. But that also means some time has passed since they spotted the fire. The only 2 normal reactions I can understand as coming next are, get some water to try and slow it down, or get yourself and everyone else out to safety. Grab my phone or camera and start filming from inside the house doesn't get on the list. Filming it doesn't seem a likely jump from somebody panicking either. Filming it from inside the house is simply stupid, plain and simple.

Right, cause the appropriate response to realizing your parent's home is in the process of burning to the ground is..?

I think you're confusing this girl's lack of swift-thinking and vocabulary..
for her genuine panic and shock over an uncontrollable situation.

>> ^budzos:

This is a pretty sad example of how kids/young people today are often incapable of engaging sincerely with actualy reality. This little idiot's house is burning down and she can't even have an honest reaction to it.