I ought to be in bed

[conuly]

and I'm going just now, but I have to share two words I learned just now: kolk and riprap. I probably will never have a chance to say "kolk" again, but, as I live in a city of islands it is very possible for me to take walks that allow me to casually walk by riprap and refer to it as such! I actually do this already, except I've never had a specialized word for those rocks before!

...occasionally, I have cause to identify very strongly with Tiffany Aching.

There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she’d read in the Almanack that gibbous meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: “Ah, I see the moon’s very gibbous tonight....”

It’s possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want you to know.

Anyway, riprap is now my second favorite rock related word, immediately after "chossy" but before "scree".

Comments

[conuly]

(Ran into this on my DW the other night, just come to think of it. I had to google a fair amount of what the person said just to understand it. Once I did, it was fine, as I think there's a difference between jargoning at me because you're merely being descriptive and assume Google exists and jargoning at me or us to show off or shut others out, and that distinction is important.)

I am absolutely convinced that a difficulty in switching register and choosing the correct sort of vocabulary is a disabling condition, a speech disorder or language impairment of some sort. 100%, and it's super common among autistics (naturally).

Despite the fact that people generally recognize this trait in autistics (even if they don't have the terminology for it), it's exceedingly difficult to get people to take it seriously, even if they acknowledge how it makes life harder for them/their autistic loved ones! (Since we tend to pick an inappropriately formal register this can be neatly chalked up to linguistic bigotry and myths regarding language.)

Which is to say that some of us use words others don't understand because we have no reliable way of knowing what words others might reasonably be expected to understand. If I think a word is obscure it probably is (the word inchoate excepted) but my thinking a word isn't obscure is useless.

[marahmarie]

I am absolutely convinced that a difficulty in switching register and choosing the correct sort of vocabulary is a disabling condition, a speech disorder or language impairment of some sort. 100%, and it's super common among autistics (naturally).

I wouldn't go for language impairment, necessarily (depends on context). Sometimes the words you know are just...the words you know. There's nothing wrong with that!

Forex, if I spent five minutes talking to people on a topic in which I have a fairly deep/almost insider-y knowledge (say: AOL) I'd guess within the first minute 90% might subtly wrinkle their brows - maybe they don't get why what I'm saying is a problem, or maybe my description's too technical and they don't know (or aren't able to care about or don't have time to get into) the details.

That doesn't make my way of describing it wrong or their reaction(s) incorrect, we just don't have the same a) knowledge, b) passion, and c) technical background to meet on the same plane.

So yeah, I think context matters. If it didn't I'd have to write off everyone I don't grok as being somewhere on the spectrum, which never even occurs to me.

My commenter the other night with the jargon's a perfect example: to my mind they were speaking in a way they know well, that describes things (as they see and deal with those things in their world) succinctly, and that perhaps they thought I might understand - sort of a wing and prayer type thing, maybe.

I don't think how they described what they described points to much more than that but again, context matters: I don't spend time with that person, so I can't really know beyond what I saw.

Since we tend to pick an inappropriately formal register

It's funny you should say that as I have to fight a tendency to do this (especially in my writing, not so much while speaking - unless I'm a bit nervous, which is probably the worst thing to do when one is).

(No formal diagnosis, probably wouldn't want to know if I am on the spectrum or not.)