It has gotten to the point where the people I know just wholly believe almost everything I say, unless I preface or follow up with “I’m pretty sure that’s right but now I’m gunna double check” (and if I’m wrong because of new info, or I misremembered something, I totally own it, and read the correction from someone else out loud)
I could so very easily horribly mislead all the people I know, because I’m a random information machine, but I almost never say things I’m not entirely sure about without the preface or follow up combined with actively looking it up and setting the record straight. If I turned evil, it would take them years to realize it was intentional.
New people are fun. They challenge me a lot on things I don’t need to preface or follow up. Never works out that well for them, but we get to learn about each other!
My sister likes to think that way, and constantly tries to tell people they’re mispronouncing words even though they are not because she can’t figure out how to properly use the pronunciation guide in a dictionary and takes the god damn TTS system Google uses that is mispronouncing words as the gospel truth.
Haha, I totally understand. I don’t trust those guides at all.
I’m a language lover myself (I like learning, but after trying for many years with multiple languages, I’m not super into practice ;) so I learn about how languages work instead!) and if there’s anything I’ve learned about language it is this:
It does not matter how you sound or what you actually say as long as the message you intended to get across actually gets across to whomever you mean to hear it. If people mispronounce, it is usually either regional (and thus correct for them) or something they read and have never heard anyone say. If they use the wrong word but it’s kinda right, they are probably language learners.
This was galvanized for me when I took an art history class as a general education credit in college. I learned that clerestory is pronounced clear-story. I’d only ever read the word before that, and thought it was more in line with modern patterns to be CLE-rest-ory, which is embarrassingly wrong. I’d been reading it that way for years.
Your sister sounds like a language prescriptivist, and they are always wrong, because language simply doesn’t work like that.
The correct pronunciation of a word is the one people understand. Aks me how I know.
Yup, same here.
What’s bad is that some of my family still like to get all pissy when I tell them to gtfo when they come to me for an answer after they’ve wasted my time by arguing over things they had come to me for in the past.
Don’t ask me your random crap, wait for me to give a good answer, then argue with me. Even if I was wrong, why the hell did you come up me in the first place if you didn’t think I knew what you were asking about?
Like you, if I don’t know, I say I don’t know. And I’ll be clear about any gaps or uncertainty. More rigorously than I do online because idgaf about random online opinions, and I still usually follow those rules online.
For a couple of years, I would tell my sister that I’m not her private google after she made a habit of wasting my time asking things and then arguing things that she didn’t know in the first place, and arguing wrong things. Just got tired of being taken for granted.
Mind you, if she’d heard the answer and just asked more questions, discussing the matter, it would be fine. But saying things as utterly infuriating as “but it said on facebook”, and “I don’t believe you” pushed me to my patience limit lol. Like, what? If you didn’t think I was reliable after the hundreds of things I was right about before, why did you even ask?
That’s just rude. I like knowing random things and sharing them with people. I have a literal degree built around doing that. You don’t have to think I’m being genuine if you don’t want to, but this is my experience.
Haha I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was just a goof. I am sorry.
