What do you consider pretentious?
Kay, but we’re Americans, and it’s sort of pointless to use an obscure foreign word when an better-known English one will do
“Synopsis” is not equivalent to “precis” in terms of vocabulary sophistication for most Americans.
QFT
OMG, and the entire Indo-European language family is derived from some proto-Sanskrit language! Clearly I am being a language snob walking around speaking normal English. I should just use rudimentary grunts. That is the only form of communication that does not reek of cosmopolitan snobbery.
EXACTLY! I would also add that whenever you use a word that will make you look smarter to the detriment of your audience’s understanding, you are being pretentious
I know what précis means and I still think it’s pretentious.
Can we agree that, if you’re using a word in a way it is not normally used in order to be different or appear educated or worldly or whatever the fuck, you’re being pretentious?
There are circumstances where précis is perfectly appropriate, and others where using it is pretentious. It has nothing to do with knowing what the word means.
However, sometimes showing off your superior knowledge (e.g. lack of ignorance) is pretentious.
Pretentious? Moi?
Some people make a big deal about properly pronouncing foreign words. That’s pretty much the definition of pretentious: “attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.”
If you’re not French, don’t speak French, and haven’t recently been to France, shut the fuck up and just mangle the pronunciation like a normal person, you’re not fooling anyone.
I know, I know, it’s the “correct” pronunciation. Listen - if you’re doing something differently from everyone else, and it’s not superior in any way except it’s technically “correct” and the normal way is not, you’re being pretentious.
I too, am required to ambulate towards the trou de voiture.
What if someone pronounces it correctly without making a big deal out of it?
How about this: if you speak French fluently or otherwise pronounce it like that naturally, you’re okay. If you don’t speak French and have to make an effort to pronounce it correctly, you’re being pretentious.
If you pronounce it naturally only because you’ve gotten used to it after years of being pretentious, you’re still pretentious.
Of course, even if you fall into the first category, in certain circles simply advertising that you know how to speak French could be viewed as pretentious. If you don’t want to be seen that way, perhaps you should intentionally mispronounce it. Yes, I know, how unfair. Welcome to life.
Now, don’t misinterpret me. I don’t think there’s much wrong with being pretentious. I often enjoy being pretentious when I’m around a bunch of slack-jawed yokels. But that doesn’t change the meaning of the word.
There is a certain pretentiousness with pronouncing foreign words with a different accent than your standard accent. So yes, the mere act of doing it is pretentious.
Why do you think politicians dumb down their speech and refuse to use foreign phrases? Because when you use big/obscure words or foreign pronunciation, it’s just a way of showing off, it’s annoying, and (pen!)ultimately it makes people not like you.
I dimly recall back in the day when Nicaragua was a political hot spot. All the lefty types in college, pardon moi, university would pronounce it as though they had just fallen off a refugee truck. “Yeah, dude, the way the US is treating La Repúblícá de Ničắragüá just sucks, man.”
Usually this story is longer and more shaggy dog like, but I figured you guys would be happy with just a précis.
Words are not pretentious. People are pretentious.
Using fancy words can be fun and if your audience knows what they mean, then all is fine. But for some, the goal is simply to show off how educated or superior they are. This itself may or may not be pretentious. As Nava posted, pretentious refers to a person trying and failing to appear as being better than they actually are. What the OP complains of sounds more like elitism than pretention. If I use the fancy word properly, I’m showing off my superior use of language and am, therefore, elitist. If I mangle the word or commit a malappaproism, THEN I’m being pretentious. Because I’m failing to live up the image I’m trying to project.
Or so I’ve heard.
OMG, returned-peace-corps-types (no offense sven and Kyla) are the WORST about this. Gah, I remember meeting this girl at a party who went to USCF med school (top 3 med school in the country) who was going on and on about how she preferred the French spoken in SomewhereObscureInAfrica (I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and say Burundi or something) to France French . . .
I think this is also a reason Megan on Mad Men gets on my nerves a bit. She throws around her French like it might be taken away from her tomorrow. My last bf was Quebecois and bless his heart but he though the Washington Post came out of Virginia.
Do you remember the SNL skit, Jimmy Smits was the guest star (I think) where they lampooned this – the extremely whitebread newscasters were saying Nicaragua like “Neekarawa” and Jimmy was like, “it’s ok, you can just pronounce it like in English” but they wouldn’t stop.
Ah, that’s a good point. I suppose I was not really considering the distinction between elitism and pretentiousness.
I support Hypno-Toads definition, and maintain there is nothing wrong with being an elitist.
In fact, come to think of it, my 5th-grade teacher once called me an elitist. When I was a 5th grader.
I would think the pretentious person would be the guy who hires someone to wash his balls, not the actual washer.
I remember during the initial phases of the Iraq war, there was a newscaster on CNN who would do this with Saddam. Right in the middle of a sentence, there would be a little pause, an almost unnoticeable intake of breath, then “Sad-DAM HU-SSEIN” said very rapidly and in an entirely different accent, and then back to her normal east coast newscaster tone and tempo.
Possibly. I may have been in Paree when it aired.
That’s because we make it look so good.
Context. Context is everything.
If your dissertation on 17th-century European economics has a précis, you’re probably using it appropriately. If your entry in the Waffle King Placemat Coloring Contest has a précis, you’re being pretentious.
I think you can still be pretentious if you use a word correctly. If you use a word to make yourself appear better than everyone else because of your vocabulary, and the word only makes you sound more obtuse, then you’re being pretentious.
To add some context to our discussion, the person who used it was a law student who was referring to an abstract.