For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for November 15, 2017

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    Templo S.U.D.  almost 7 years ago

    well, Elly’s plan of prevent cursing is off to an interesting start

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    howtheduck  almost 7 years ago

    Frankly I would be a little nervous about any thesaurus where Michael was able to find the word “stoopid”.

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    jpayne4040  almost 7 years ago

    Come on Michael! Where’s the fun in shredding people if they don’t know what you’re saying?

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    Rosette  almost 7 years ago

    I remember when my brother and I looked up ‘pee’ in our dictionary. The definition was “To peer”. What a letdown.

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    Space_cat  almost 7 years ago

    Just 70 years ago the average persons English vocabulary was 10,000 words Today it seems to be around 1000, maybe far fewer thanks to emojis.

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    dlkrueger33  almost 7 years ago

    Emojis go WAY back. The Egyptians were the first to use them. We have come full circle.

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    Linguist  almost 7 years ago

    While, as a general rule, the average person uses 1/10 of his vocabulary in his daily speech, there is a difference between oral and written vocabulary. Our daily spoken word vocabulary is significantly lower than or written usage or our reading comprehension.

    For example:English has approximately 171,476 words in current use — according to the Oxford English Dictionary, – but the average native speaker uses, on a daily basis, only 1200 to 2000 of them ( EnglishEnglish.com ).

    I tend to think that the average American uses far fewer words – between 300 – 700 in daily speech. The American vocabulary has been greatly diminished because of social media and the constricts of internet posting.

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    johnec  almost 7 years ago

    And the current president has about a 200 word spoken vocabulary – and we aren’t sure if he can read at all.

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    phoenixnyc  almost 7 years ago

    As John found out last week, the only thing more dangerous than Michael and Elizabeth at odds is Michael and Elizabeth working together.

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    tuslog1964  almost 7 years ago

    Tone of voice can give you away too. Once the wife and I had a fake argument, ie “I was wrong and you were right” “No, you were right and I was wrong.” And after a couple rounds the 2-yr. old got upset! (We reassured him nothing was wrong)

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    USN1977  almost 7 years ago

    A good read is 1984 by George Orwell. It talks a lot about Newspeak, the politically correct language the government is forcing on the populace. Its goal was to supersede Oldspeak, or standard English, in that every statement would be a simple word. Bad would become “ungood”, or very bad was “doubleplusungood”.

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    codedaddy  almost 7 years ago

    I think they should begin with learning grammar, e.g. “there ARE about 50 words…”.

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    Dragoncat  almost 7 years ago

    Way to go, Elly… You have given your children weapons of mass destruction.

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