Antiquated Language

[Ex-User (9062)]

Do you feel a certain desire to use presumed "antiquated" vocabulary in day-to-day conversations?
Have people pointed this out to you?
What is your relationship with dictionaries and (non-contemporary) literature?

 

[pernoctator]

Don't Mind Your Language

But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright. Unlike music, painting, dance and raffia work, you don’t have to be taught any part of language or buy any equipment to use it, all the power of it was in you from the moment the head of daddy’s little wiggler fused with the wall of mummy’s little bubble. So if you’ve got it, use it. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t believe it belongs to anyone else, don’t let anyone bully you into believing that there are rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment that you are not privy to. Don’t be humiliated by dinosaurs into thinking yourself inferior because you can’t spell broccoli or moccasins. Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity. Words are free and all words, light and frothy, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage from lip to lip over thousands of years. How they feel to us now tells us whole stories of our ancestors.

- Stephen Fry

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

Very uplifting speech Rev. pernoctator!

 

[Cavallier]

I read dictionaries and thesauri for fun. I had a turn of the century OED in my hands once. Well, it was on a podium. It was big. They had to practically drag me away from it. It was old and musty and filled with all sorts of words I'd never seen or heard before. *covetcovetcovet*

 

[Seed-Wad]

I like how old language and old literature (e.g. Oscar Wilde) has a certain class to it, a beauty and passion - passion that seems lost in the present. It's passion and beauty that I seek in everything, and so I too am drawn to archaic language like you.

The same thing for music from about 1930 till 1980 (some left in 1990/2000), now in 2010, even the really good music seems to be missing something, perhaps it's soul, lost by the exchange of harsh misery for 'soft' misery (e.g. having no food vs. having everything and feeling depressed without knowing why).

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Pyropyro]

Not exactly antiquated but it's a big no-no to use uncommon English words during casual talk. For example, if I use 'dissonance' rather than 'no harmony', my friends pretend that their head hurts or that they'll have nosebleeds.

I only use uncommon words if there's no common English or Filipino term that suits my idea.

Dictionaries are awesome especially now that we have Wiktionary.

 

[mu is mu]

Do you feel a certain desire to use presumed "antiquated" vocabulary in day-to-day conversations?
Have people pointed this out to you?

No, because in my experience there is oftentimes a presence of social pressure which discourages such behavior. The sentence I just typed, if uttered around most people I know, would almost certainly draw more attention to its relatively abnormal vocabulary rather than to the meaning of the sentence itself. When communicating on this forum that type of linguistic constraint is evidently inactive, as the social context with its corresponding norms are very different from other social contexts I normally encounter.

I suspect that NTs are drawn to technical writings and novels that employ and preserve the more technical, expressive forms of language, thus in a sense rendering our capacity for expression greater than others but which incidentally lies outside of that considered normal by the majority. I know that there are certain social contexts in which NTs can communicate freely in their own style without incurring discouragement, but to me it seems that social life is, for the most part, not one of those contexts.

What is your relationship with dictionaries and (non-contemporary) literature?

I rarely encounter "antiquated" literature and have little desire to do so, but contemporary NT writings can themselves appear antiquated because of the conservative nature of technical writings/literature, similar to the situation described above. But it does seem that I reference dictionaries often, although I don't consider myself a dictionary reader.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I read dictionaries and thesauri for fun. I had a turn of the century OED in my hands once. Well, it was on a podium. It was big. They had to practically drag me away from it. It was old and musty and filled with all sorts of words I'd never seen or heard before. *covetcovetcovet*

Same here. When i was a young boy, i first started to admire the illustrations in encyclopedic books, then i slowly started developing reading and writing skills before attending school. And i would always find great pleasure in discovering new words. So, i guess that has settled into my personality for good. I also started to become addicted to etymology more recently.

I like how old language and old literature (e.g. Oscar Wilde) has a certain class to it, a beauty and passion - passion that seems lost in the present. It's passion and beauty that I seek in everything, and so I too am drawn to archaic language like you.

The same thing for music from about 1930 till 1980 (some left in 1990/2000), now in 2010, even the really good music seems to be missing something, perhaps it's soul, lost by the exchange of harsh misery for 'soft' misery (e.g. having no food vs. having everything and feeling depressed without knowing why).

Just my 2 cents.

I share your aesthetic position to the t.
Definitely, from the mid-1970s there seems to have been a major paradigm shift, which embraces the haywire over the beautiful.
I guess certain philosophical, technological and social prerequisites for that had their blossom time in the 1950s and 1960s.

Not exactly antiquated but it's a big no-no to use uncommon English words during casual talk. For example, if I use 'dissonance' rather than 'no harmony', my friends pretend that their head hurts or that they'll have nosebleeds.

I only use uncommon words if there's no common English or Filipino term that suits my idea.

Dictionaries are awesome especially now that we have Wiktionary.

Yes, that's a problem i can relate to.
Also a big fan of wiktionary.

No, because in my experience there is oftentimes a presence of social pressure which discourages such behavior. The sentence I just typed, if uttered around most people I know, would almost certainly draw more attention to its relatively abnormal vocabulary rather than to the meaning of the sentence itself. When communicating on this forum that type of linguistic constraint is evidently inactive, as the social context with its corresponding norms are very different from other social contexts I normally encounter.

There have been a bunch of people who would be able to follow me,
but most folk seem to react almost offended.
Don't know if it has to do with an inferiority complex on their behalf.
But, i don't use uncommon vocabulary to make myself feel superior.
At first i tried to adapt my speech to common man language,
but it really is a pain, because you have to unravel the precise vocabulary you would normally use and break it down, so that even a five year old could understand it.
As you can imagine, this is very exhausting.
So, i gradually developed frustration induced mutism.
I'm not too happy with that condition either...

 

[nearfantastica]

I often use words that give people pause. I have one friend whose automatic response is always: "Speak like a normal person, would you?" I can't seem to help it.

I should add that reading 20th century literature or older tends to mess with your word choice. I have no doubt that I've used antiquated language at some time or another - especially when I'm doing assignments in the middle of the night. The more tired I am, the stranger words that crop up in whatever I'm writing/saying get.

 

[GodOfOrder]

Personally, I have read more older texts than I have new ones. This of course being a consequence not wanting to spend money. As a result, I tend to use older terms, and the older connotations of said terms, more often. This occurs both in spoken and written language, and people do comment on it.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

Personally, I have read more older texts than I have new ones. This of course being a consequence not wanting to spend money. As a result, I tend to use older terms, and the older connotations of said terms, more often. This occurs both in spoken and written language, and people do comment on it.

Actually, some older books i would really like to have are worth hundreds or thousands of Dollars.
Contemporary literature just doesn't do it for me,
it's very unspecific and it takes forever to get to the point
because all that mandatory post-modern relativism, apologetic whimpering and beating around the bush clouds the idea.
I don't have time for that.

 

[GodOfOrder]

Actually, some older books i would really like to have are worth hundreds or thousands of Dollars.
Contemporary literature just doesn't do it for me,
it's very unspecific and it takes forever to get to the point
because all that mandatory post-modern relativism, apologetic whimpering and beating around the bush clouds the idea.
I don't have time for that.

I should clarify that I read lots of public domain books on my kindle. So everything I read is all free. The writing is quite old, the format is not.

 

[pernoctator]

I read dictionaries and thesauri for fun. I had a turn of the century OED in my hands once. Well, it was on a podium. It was big. They had to practically drag me away from it. It was old and musty and filled with all sorts of words I'd never seen or heard before. *covetcovetcovet*

A Lode For Logastelli

Grandiloquent Dictionary

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I should clarify that I read lots of public domain books on my kindle. So everything I read is all free. The writing is quite old, the format is not.

Oh, i see.
Sometimes i forget what great advances technology has taken in the past decade.

Spoiler

(I have no idea what a kindle is, but i have heard it in context of e-book reading before, so i assume it is a handheld device specifically for that.
I have lived under a rock for a very long time.)

 

[Starcrossed]

I don't believe I do but everyone complains that I sound too formal and I use words that no one understands... These are the very same words I use when talking to my kid sister and she can follow along just fine... Actually I fear she may have a larger vocabulary than me.