Loquacious

"But in a culture like ours, language is exclusive, not inclusive. Those on easy terms with words are distrusted. I was always encouraged to believe that cleverness and elegance with word obscured and twisted decent truth." 

- Stephen Fry

Reading his autobiography, this statement strikes me as ridiculously true. In all the fables I've ever read, all the children's stories, the villian (if possible) is potrayed as a glib, smooth talking wolf-like person. Someone who could run circles 'round your head with stories, and convince you to do something not conducive to your self. 

Ridiculous.

People have been telling me this since I was ye big, telling me that a person who talks to much shouldn't be trusted. Although talking too much isn't a yardstick, its talking to well that makes people get their guard up. 

Now in college, I had this problem. I didn't finish some work, and it was overdue by a couple of four weeks... and I explained to them, at the end of the four weeks why it was so late. To my credit, it was 90% truth, and 10% exaggaration, to warrant the four weeks. They had issues believing me, because I spoke so well. 

This often happens. I've got a large vocabulary. Larger than a lot of people, at any rate. Most people have a great grip on the language, but they don't really go beyond that. I take a certain amount of delight in words, hence the reasonable size of my vocabulary. At this point, I must hasten to add that by no means is my English fantastic. It has been brought to my notice that my grammar isn't great, and that my pronunciation could be topped by a chimpanzee with a slur. 

Now when I speak, I generally use a lot of words which I like. Words which aren't usually heard in everyday conversation, and hence by training, my teachers are prone to not believe me. 

Thinking about it, it seems like this is probably because glib people are generally smarter than non-glib people. People don't like smarter people, because smarter people make them feel dumb, hence glib people are looked upon as perpetually trying to put one over the other guy.

In defence of other word-y people, I just have to say this : We might be smarter than you, we might not. But we only occasionally try to put one over you guys, and even then (speaking for myself, now) its only just for fun.

Don't hate on us.