I agree that some people sometimes don’t know certain words. No doubt some people don’t actually know “diabetes” and “library.”
But your characterization of “DIE-beetus” for example makes me think that you’re identifying a certain pronunciation which includes all the right letters in the right places–the word is known perfectly well–but in which the sound of the A recedes and may seem to disappear to people who personally say it differently.
I don’t believe in “standard” pronunciations, just correct ones. Since the word “diabetes” doesn’t belong to any particular set of people (the way, say, a place or personal name does) there can be multiple pronunciations which are equally correct; incidence of each will vary by circle, but the less common ones (again, with knowledge of the word) aren’t wrong. (This is the same thing I was talking about with respect to the word “anesthesia” and its derivatives, in which some pronunciations allow the H to recede. And again with the first R of “library.”) Just because your speech may conform to a majority group’s patterns in a particular place doesn’t mean that yours is the only correct.
:rolleyes: I’m guessing the self-diagnosed and their “Aspies Are Actually Indigo Children” friends.
Quit presuming to speak for everyone.
Fuck that that shit. I say I’m OCD all the time. People know what I mean. It’s called slang.
I once read an article from the Epilepsy Foundation complaining about people who call themselves “epileptics”. You should say you ARE epileptic, or you have epilepsy. Screw that. I’m an epileptic and I’m OCD.
I suppose I can understand why people do this with the acronym disorders. You really should say “I’m OC” (“I’m obsessive-compulsive”), but that is a little confusing (You’re a crappy TV show?) So I understand the need for “I’m OCD”, as there is no correct adjective to use that is not unwieldy.
However, “epileptic” is the correct adjective. What bothers me are people who say “She’s epilepsy” instead of “She’s epileptic”, because they’re too stupid to know the proper word.
I remember reading a review for one of the Lord of the Rings films, where they described Gollum as “schizoid.” :smack:
No, if you’re talking about schizophrenia, then you should at least used “schizo.” Gollum isn’t schizoid as he didn’t live alone in a cave by choice. And even then, he’s not schizophrenic, I think they meant to use it to refer to Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka “Multiple Personality Disorder.”
People aren’t PhDs! They HAVE PhDs! The entire Academo-American community is probably outraged at such inconsiderate usage and lack of sensitivity.
That’s “Youse crazy.” I’m offended you didn’t use the proper spelling. That is so disrespectful of the Western New York culture, and all those of Western New Yorkian descent. I’ll see you in the Pit.
“Schizoid” gets misused almost as much as “schizophrenic” does. “Schizoid” is not short-hand for “schizophrenic”–it’s something all-together different. Fortunately I’ve only see this mistake on the internet. And I bet the people using the word in this way don’t even pronounce it correctly.
But when people misuse “schizophrenic”–as in “The weather has been quite schizophrenic lately”–I don’t bother correcting them. “The weather has been quite MPD lately” just doesn’t have the same ring to it and I know what they’re trying to say anyway.
Yes, in my experience, people have Aspergers. Come to think of it, I haven’t had Aspergers in a long time. I like it al dente with a little butter and maybe some Parmesan. “Quick as boiled Aspergers,” as the Emperor Augustus used to say!
I try to use whatever phrasing will make people most comfortable, because why wouldn’t I, but I do have some trouble getting behind the concept that saying “He’s diabetic” as opposed to “He has diabetes” is offensive, due to it defining someone. Nobody minds if you say “He’s blonde” or “He’s blue-eyed” or “He’s thin” or “He’s short-tempered”. Nobody feels like those phrases define a person, they’re clearly just part of the overall description of a person. Why when it comes to illnesses or disabilities is it different? I’m not worked up over it or anything, and like I said, I try to use whatever the accepted phrasing is, but I just have trouble understanding the logic.
It happens. I recently read a newspaper article about how two women fell from a hotel room when they “busted through a window” during horseplay. I was all set to get righteously indignant and write my email to the editor about how it should be “burst through a window,” then I looked it up and found that “busted” is apparently accepted usage in that context these days. Sigh.
Well, sure, Spoke. “Burst” implies that the internal pressure of an object overcame the tensile strength of the object’s surface, and as a result, the entire object ruptures and loses integrity. Balloons burst. Bubbles burst. People burst with [insert some random non-concrete noun].
Busted has a more colloquial tenor to it, less formal than broke. It’s a transitive noun and requires agency. I busted my elbow once, falling off a bike. The firefighter busted the door down to rescue the child. The women busted the window when they fell onto it during horseplay. “The women burst the window” doesn’t make sense, because it’s an intransitive verb. You have to throw in a preposition and create a prepositional phrase “through the window” to make it work. I like busted because it has a sense of Wild West brawling that the women in question were probably not far from.
(Um . . . the fact that I wrote the above is evidence that there is something seriously wrong with me. Maybe I need to kidnap a class of 11-year-olds and give them grammar lessons. Just now, I think I’ll have a little lie-down.)
It’s almost always more efficient/less annoying to type or say things like ‘Asperger’s kid’ , ‘diabetic’, or ‘I’m OCD’ than ‘the kid who has Asperger’s’, ‘a person who has diabetes’, or ‘I have a diagnosis of OCD’. Especially when the main point you’re making hinges on their disorder/diagnosis in particular.
ETA: Although I do always say ‘I have ADD’ rather than ‘I’m ADD’, for some reason.
Both the original (“the women busted through the window”) and my suugested replacement (“the women burst through the window”) included the same prepositional phrase. So I guess I don’t see what you’re saying.
My 6th grade English teacher would have had an aneurism if we had used “busted” in that context. “Bust” was regarded as a corruption of “burst.” And “busted” was just beyond the pale.
My neice finally got dx’d with Asperger’s Syndrome. She’s about 15, and will proudly explain to you that she is an ‘Aspie’. You can want to lock her in a closet if you want to, but sheesh.
Oh, BTW, she’s smarter than you are, too!
