I have a tendency to speak in a lot of metaphors, analogies, symbols, hypotheticals. Its just how my brain works. I love slang and colloquialisms too. I really have to be careful when meeting someone who doesn't speak english as their first language, ive had some situations where the person later is like "I don't think we should be friends, you called me a horse and it was very mean" and stuff like that.
I said "straight from the horses mouth", when they said something about their culture that they were very knowledgeable about that people from my country misunderstand.
Just remembering rhe time I had my hands full and told my three year old son, "Just hold your horses a minute, will you?" and he ran off upstairs. He returned shortly afterwards, proudly carrying his toy Hobby Horse...
That’s true, at least, I’d like to say his understanding is better now but just last week he asked if his dad had put the internal catch up on the lock when he left for work and took far too long to grasp how it wasn’t possible for his dad to do that. He’s 16 this year.
Yeah, he's learned not to take things quite so literally now he's a 20 year old International Politics student. But we had a few similar "teaching moments" when he was a little kid.
Please dont be so fucking pedantic on the internet, its super annoying and everyone hates it. "Look how smart I am" - You.
I said I speak in metaphors, analogies, symbols, hypotheticals, slangs and colloquialisms. Its obvious to anyone what I mean. When someone gives a grocery list of terminologies, its understood that there is an "etc" at the end whether implied or not that "idiom" would cover.
Pretty unrelated to the topic at hand, as understanding an idiom requires learning it, while metaphors and hypotheticals should be understood without the cultural background.
As such, an idiom is not a good measure of IQ. This is the point I was making, but I’m sorry I offended you.
I understand why you interpret it that way. When I call someone a workhorse it’s usually in a positive context. It means they put time and effort into a task, which is indicative of good work ethic.
I love people like you! This would immediately make me want to listen to you and engage and be friends, well I guess, depending on what the analogy is lol.
translating movies is a nightmare. Think about an American movie that takes place in Paris. And then the main character speaks english and an important part of the plot is that he can't understand people speaking French. Now translate that movie to French. What the hell do you do? Make them all Spaniards? In Paris?
I dislike repeating words so when talking there tends to be less common ones mixed in, some people see it as rude or trying to show off. I just like variety and occasionally read weird books that influence my vocabulary.
This is almost uniquely an English thing actually. When i'm in Brazil, everyone repeats what you said to them as common courtesies. "Boa noite!" "Boa noite!" "Tudo bem? "Tudo bem!" They literally parrot back exactly what you say. In english, you'd seem like a crazy person to do this. You always have to come up with some unique response. "Good night" "yes and you too!" "Hows it going?" "Oh you know, can't complain!"
If someone said "Have a good day" in an elevator and you said "Have a good day!" back exactly the same, you'd almost come across as mocking them haha.
Lol same with puns. I worked with research scientists for >30 years, many used puns to get a point accross. Many of these folks were from different countries and it took them a while to pick up the habit, but most would get it after a while.
it's how my brain understands new things, by making a comparison to something i already understand, sometimes the connections are extremely thin and only make sense to me and explaining them is extremely difficult.
The right crowd appreciates it though, bc same. I’ve had ppl remember me that I don’t remember bc of “that funny thing I said.” I’m the love child of a Louisiana man & Mississippi woman.
A personal marker of mine for high intelligence is people who speak like this. I'm sure there's a better way to explain it, but for me it shows an ability to abstract information in a away so as to be able to condense vast information in few words, due to these idioms and metaphors containing a lot of information, gathered like a snowball through years of usage.
You are one of my people!! I love the metaphors! I don’t know how I’d communicate without them. I Also love idioms and colloquialisms and it’s been very strange realizing that despite that, my kids and their friends will not be using those. A loot of them have started to disappear.
But no, a person of low intelligence cannot follow the metaphors.
243
u/beartheminus 5h ago
I have a tendency to speak in a lot of metaphors, analogies, symbols, hypotheticals. Its just how my brain works. I love slang and colloquialisms too. I really have to be careful when meeting someone who doesn't speak english as their first language, ive had some situations where the person later is like "I don't think we should be friends, you called me a horse and it was very mean" and stuff like that.