conuly

Sometimes, people think I'm being condescending when I'm trying to help. Or, that's what they say, anyway. I'm not sure why that is, but it occurs to me that it might have something to do with how much I say. Actually, it occured to me right now with this exchange (cut short because it's a bit long):

On the NC forums, a debate was... well, not quite raging, but going on about the use of "rp speech". For those not in the know, RP is role-play (I hope all my friends know that!) and rp speech is, apparently, the affected mode of English used by certain RPers (orbs for eyes, auds for ears, and so on). One person was defending it a bit, and phy mentioned that it's pretentious. Except that in her sentence, she used the word mihi (which you may remember me telling everyone about).

Now, I know she wasn't doing that to be ironic, so I pointed out that, while I *love* anybody using that word, since most people don't, in fact, know what it means, using it in that particular statement was a bit silly. And we keep talking and rp-speech-defenderperson eventually says:

I shall defenestrate anyone who thinks otherwise

Oh, and, um [embarrassment] what is mihi a contraction of? [/embarrassment] (I can't find it on dictionary.com if it is, in fact, a full word...)

*grins* You know I can't pass up an opporunity like this!

So here's my response, in its entirity:

*takes pity on you because you know the word defenestration*

Mihi isn't a contraction... it's the dative of ego in Latin.

Basically, the dative is the indirect object: to/for me. In this sense, it's what's called the dative of relation (?)... something seems pretentious to me (or, more formally, in relation to me). My Latin class is nothing but a trio of geeks... well, a duo of geeks and Tina, so when we learned the dative of relation (?) we (me and michael) actually started using it in English. I told people on my livejournal about it, and some of them (like phy) liked it.

And yes, my latin class (well, me and michael) DOES use the verb "defenestrate" (to throw somebody out a window) properly, as well as the verb "rusticate" (to live in the country)

I have no intention of changing that, but... is the middle paragraph too involved? Does she need/want to know all that? Is it useful? Was I talking too much? Do I often talk too much? Is that rude? Is it showing off? Is it insulting? *is confuzzled slightly*

_{Oh, and offtopic, lookie, cool new icon!}