[Dundee]

"The big problem in Australia is getting young men to talk at all. Girls are much more orally adventurous."

Now I know why we keep seeing Clinton over here.

[endthematrix]

"Barry Spurr, senior lecturer in English at the University of Sydney, said social pressures meant Australian men in particular were more reluctant to display their language abilities.

"They are afraid to be seen expressing thought because they are sexually insecure," Dr Spurr said. "They want to be seen to be real men and the standard for real men wouldn't be seen to express a thought."

What a bunch of - like oh my gawd - CRAP!

[Nam Vet]

Why are we subjected to opinions by people obviously educated FAR beyond their native intelligence?

Nam Vet

[beaver fever]

It's not just vernacular but the speed young girls talk.

My family was at a new fusion restaurant last week and the waitress was incomprehensible. My brother in law had to make her repeat herself three times to make his order.

Plus she didn't have a clue about anything on the menu other than what she had memorized.

My stuffed chicken breast turned out to be an over cooked breaded chicken schnitzel.

I would have never guessed that from the menu and her pathetic attempt to describe it.

Stuffed with butter and garlic?

Sorry dear that's a marinade and you don't take a marinade cut, bread it and BBQ it under a couple of hot clay bricks until it is harder than the plate you're eating on.

The fashion sense of 17 year old girls today is going to be the death of us all. But like, fa shaw, who am I to judge. Bag my face and gag me with a spoon!!!

[Charles Henrickson]

Teenage girls so, like, rule English

Whatever.

[Names Ash Housewares]

"muffin top" (a bulge of flesh over low-cut jeans) and "whale tail" (the appearance of a g-string above the waistband of a skirt or trousers).


And that this new lingo refers to dressing like streetwalkers is also comforting.

[Sofa King]

"They are afraid to be seen expressing thought because they are sexually insecure," Dr Spurr said. "They want to be seen to be real men and the standard for real men wouldn't be seen to express a thought."

Sounds like a feminist "real man" to me.

[ncountylee]

I still use ye, but I'm slow.

[Rocky]

I'm reading the story, and I'm like, "Yeah". Uh-huh.

[Zetman]

"They would recruit words that appear in American hip hop music. That was one way they would build their own identity," she said.

Ummmmmm....

Ok.

To me, it sounds like "they" are borrowing someone else's identity, not building their own. If "they" were building their OWN identity, they would use words from their own culture (or make up new words!!).

In addition, what is all this crap about young men never speaking because they are sexually insecure?? How did the writer make THAT connection?? That is quite a leap. This sounds like a page right out of the feminist and gay agenda play book. It is how they imagine men to be (or want them to be), and it is how Hollywood portrays men, but other than that, the concept has no basis in reality. When I was in high school, guys spoke to each other constantly, laughing and joking. Most didn't seem to be insecure, at least not in any major way. Very bizarre article. One has to be really dedicated to pushing "the agenda" to put out a piece like this.

[KellyAdmirer]

"They are afraid to be seen expressing thought because they are sexually insecure,"

That is one of the strangest quotes I have seen around here in a long time. "Cats run from dogs because they like to drink milk" makes about as much sense.

[jocon307]

Simple math would demonstrate the truth of this, since 16 year old girls talk without pause from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep (with the phone still at their ear) it only makes sense that they would lead the world in language innovation. This article discusses the English language only, but I'm sure it would prove true of all language, with the possible exception of Arabic, since those women are all so repressed.

[vikzilla]

Girls are much more orally adventurous."

God bless 'em!

[Lil'freeper]

This style of speech is characterised by inserting drawled words such as "like" and "so" to add emphasis to a sentence, which rises in pitch at the end.

The fact they they honestly can't/won't hear how stupid it makes them sound only compounds the problem. They, like, wanna be, all, like taken seriously? in the real world. And, like, when they, you know, aren't taken seriously and all that they take up the banner of feminism because they are too foolish to see that it is their own behavior that is holding them back - not men, not the world, not the oppressive patriarchical corporate system, not George Bush.

For great fun, try parroting the "like, you knows, I was all, you knows" back at them. You can even embellish it with some eye-rolling and sneering. When they react, explain that it sounds awful when an adult talks like that, and that if they ever want to be taken seriously as a young adult they should STOP IT!

< /soapbox >

[guitfiddlist]

This style of speech is characterised by inserting drawled words such as "like" and "so" to add emphasis to a sentence, which rises in pitch at the end.

I'm SUUUreee. Like...he really knows. If he like really LISTened, he'd know that it's a rise and a drawn out drop at the EEeend. He's so like...OUT of iiiiiiiiit.

Know your dingbats.

[Pharmboy]

Hmmm...interesting. But I would have guessed that it was the African American hip hop community that contributes more new words and meanings to English than Valley girls. Word...

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Uhhhgg...

Female mouth move, not put food in.

Mean much trouble.

[Lou L]

Girls are much more orally adventurous

Should that really be, "verbally adventurous," rather than what the article chose? Poor choice of words.

[yarddog]

There is nothing sillier than a young teenage girl. They get a little better when they approach 16. Not to say they aren't sweet and cute, just silly.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Ellen Grote, a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Perth, has studied how Aboriginal teenage girls borrowed words from other cultures in their email gossip to construct a communal identity.

You gotta love the modern world.

[Wolfie]

has ensured the success of new phrases such as "muffin top" (a bulge of flesh over low-cut jeans)

In the States its known as a "gunt".