<p>I glanced at the thread. Of course it is not wrong to be courteous. The kids on that thread are reacting to what sounds, to them, like pomposity.</p>
<p>You mentioned that your safeties are outside the US. Is English your native language?</p>
<p>Jozhekryx- Unfortunately, CC is not the utopia we sometimes perceive it as. People here, more so than in “real life,” I believe, are often rude and ruthless. I’m sorry to hear people haven’t been kind, but all you can do it realize that those people don’t matter. Your vocabulary is certainly a gift; don’t let CCers who don’t matter convince you otherwise.</p>
<p>Thank you for your carefully elicited responses.</p>
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No, I am afraid not. I have learned English in middle school.</p>
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You are indeed correct. However, I do not find my aforementioned post to be * verbose *.
I have always believed words such as ‘gerrymandering’ or ‘filibuster’ to be technical terms.</p>
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Thank you for your heartwarming remark.
College Confidential forums have been very addicting!
Thank you for your kind words.</p>
<p>Josek
What I think some are trying to express to you is that there is a difference between conversational speech and… for lack of a better word, technical speech. The words I use in professional reports are not the words I commonly use in everyday conversations. You asked if your speech sounded robotic. It is a bit stilted for conversational speech, which is, as I tried to say earlier, why you might be getting some flack in the HS life forum. The words I highlighted earlier do sound a tad verbose. You might want to consider alternative adjectives or adverbs. Plethora, captious, crestfallen-- sound a bit like SAT vocab study words JMO</p>
<p>Most people on CC will probably understand the SAT vocab study words you use, but there are many words in our language that native English speakers do not use in ordinary conversations. These might be considered more literary words, in a sense.</p>
<p>If you were in the US and talking to less educated people, almost none of them would even understand words like “captious” or “plethora.”</p>
<p>There’s a reason those are SAT words… They’re less common. They’re hallmarks of an excellent vocabulary, to be sure, but there is a decidedly low percentage of the population who have an excellent vocabulary.</p>
<p>Something to consider: the point of communication is to convey your thoughts to others. If your audience has to pay very close attention to understand what you’re saying, then you’re not being an effective communicator. Your intensity of vocabulary is somewhat self-defeating.</p>
<p>Having an excellent vocabulary is commendable, but not to the detriment of your ability to communicate effectively with others. Use obscure vocabulary as though it were a spice… If you were making a soup, you’d use significantly more water than you would cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper may be what makes the soup interesting, but if you use more cayenne pepper than you do ordinary water, nobody’s going to stick around long enough to try it.</p>
<p>Edit: It might be to your advantage to take a course or two in rhetoric; they may have some good suggestions for you on how to take your impressive vocabulary and use it to hone more effective writing and communication skills.</p>
<p>Reading can help you develop an ear for more appropriate casual speech.
I suggest a few of my favorite authors: E.B White, James Thurber , Fran Lebowitz.</p>
<p>Guys – I was just like you in high school. Got some of the highest English scores my school had ever seen – and it was a pretty good school in a well-to-do area where the parents were mostly higher-ups in a variety of businesses and government. I got to college, found English to be incredibly dull – more about how to teach it than how to work with it – and wound up a writer anyway.</p>
<p>It’s taken me the better part of 30 years to learn to write simply but clearly. Save yourselves. Work on that.</p>
JMO</p>