Do you feel like there is a part of your personality that’s become a bit of an old biddy? You don’t get young people today and you don’t understand a word they say?
Maybe it’s the slang words that you don’t quite understand or maybe its words pronounced in an odd way (its not aks – its ask!). Maybe it’s bad grammar or maybe its “text-style” writing.
Have you found yourself labelling them as uneducated, have you decided that your language is better than theirs? Have you written them off as someone you can’t or wouldn’t want to talk to?
Greg Burson, says that “engaging in conversation is a form of hospitality“. I love that.
The language we use is influenced by our culture and by our generation. The way we communicate feels right to us. If we judge a person based solely on the way they communicate, then we reject their attempt to invite us into conversation, we reject their hospitality. We miss the opportunity to connect and to hear their story.
I believe we need to be really mindful of our language prejudices. It is so easy to write someone off. Instead of filtering people out, we need to be inviting them in(to conversation).
distillations.blog 
u got a . b4 i 4get the . thnx. btw, gr8 post.
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Thx bro. App da creds!
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Ok…so I am lost. Is that a bad thing?
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It’s a good thing – translation: thank you brother. Appreciate the credit.
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Thx. App the exp.
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That’s a profound thought. I never thought it in this way. May be I will try to overlook any persons styles of conversation and rather get into some real exchange of thoughts without judging that person.
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Thank you Megha. 🙂
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Oh wow. It IS true. I can’t stand people who speak with grammatical errors. In fact I listen to find faults in their sentences, sometimes entirely missing the conversation.
Its a flaw I have been working on for a while. Thanks for sharing conversationcat! 🙂
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Thank you for your comments. Yes it sure it something to think about – and I’m working on it all the time too.
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“engaging in conversation is a form of hospitality“- I love that as well. Very good post. Thanks
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Thank you – I’m glad you like it too. It gives me warm fuzzies when I think of it.
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One of my first bosses when I started working with the public, and my chosen profession was to help families in crisis, touched on this topic. Not as eloquently, though. But it stuck and I’m grateful. I loved the statement about hospitality and inviting them into the conversation!
But I still feel a bit of an old biddy at this….more in reading posts that use incorrect grammar…..🤔
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This is mind-opening. Sometimes I get easily annoyed just hearing the new generations talk with one another. And that simply made me lost interest to converse with them. I realized that was so unkind. I have to look into changing that attitude a bit. How will I be able to reach out to them if I don’t communicate openly? In fact, our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal said, “The youth is the hope of the nation.” Well I guess that follows regardless which generation it is. Thank you. 🙂
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I enjoyed reading this post. I’ve spent some time looking up words on Urban Dictionary as well. A fun show to watch with unique idioms is “Playing House” on USA Network; I’ve caught myself saying “toteskewl” and “absolutes magoots”. “Toteskewl”, for example, puts together “totes” (totally”) and “kewl” (“cool”). Open communication is important, even for starting a conversation these days. By the way, I love the cat logo you created for your blog.
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Thanks Robin. sometimes I use the slang my 16 yr old son uses and he looks at me and then says “stop” and when I ask why, his response is that it just sounds weird when I speak like that. So maybe in our house at least, it’s ok to understand the lingo, but not ok to speak it if you are a “certain age”.
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They want you to know what the lingo means, but they don’t expect you to use it as they do. I had to learn that as a substitute teacher working some high school assignments. They show you ways to be part of their world without crossing that thin line. 🙂
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You are right ! Your post made me think ! People may be speaking the same language, but the slangs might be different, which makes it difficult to understand. But, if we work on this aspect of communicating with people and trying to understand the slang, then it might be easy. 🙂
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