Adjectives Banned

[lillibet]

For those of you who don't read languagelog, I just had to point out a recent entry, in which the following was related by one of their correspondents:

I was in the Children's Museum in Baltimore when I overheard this conversation between a mother and a young son, concerning a bizarre "fun house" installation, which had sloping ceilings, "wrong" furniture, odd colors, and all sorts of other things meant to delight children with its absurdity:

SON: I want to go in that silly house again!

MOTHER: Don't you remember? We do NOT use ADJECTIVES!

SON: Sorry, mommy!

The entry goes on to point out that what the mother is presumably trying to teach her kid is not to use judgmental language. But that's equally ludicrous. WTF, mom?!

Comments

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

Is that a true story? It's ridiculous. Worse than the conversation I heard the other day between a mother and her toddler who was using the potty. I mean, eventually all kids will use the potty, so we believe that rewards for potty training are not where it's at.

[mdm-sosostris.livejournal.com]

I find your use of the word "equally" extremely judgemental. I think you oughtta lay off the adverbs for a while.

*snort*

Oy. Although I will admit I have strange grammar quirks myself. I've had a strained relationship with similes ever since I saw As Good As It Gets:

"People who talk in metaphors oughtta shampoo my crotch."

The simple effectiveness of this sentence, the economy of language, stuns me. So every time I use a metaphor in conversation, I feel a little dirty. like I should be among the crotch-shampooing plebians of the verbal world.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Did that woman really ban a whole syntactical category from her son's language? Words fail me.

Maybe I should ban a whole category from language as well. I hereby decree that no one is allowed to use nouns! No gerunds, either!

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

wow. at first i misread that as "those adjectives," and thought, wow, that's absurd. but wow. no adjectives at all?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Are you sure there was an implied comma between the words in the sons reply? He could have meant "[You are one seriously] sorry mommy!"

[marmota.livejournal.com]

"Oh, right; I want to go in that house again, BITCH."

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Utter WTF. How the frack do you communicate even the most simple thing without adjectives? When a stranger offers that little boy candy, imagine him having to describe them within the confines of "A tall man with short blond hair wearing a heavy coat in an old, black car. Right.

Hey mama...WE do NOT use brains!

Preston

[mdm-sosostris.livejournal.com]

He's kinda tall, with hair, and he wears T-shirts sometimes.

Re: Preston

[minkrose]

cuz he's PRESTON, man! prestooooooone! ... one of my favourite movie bits of all time. Made me smile, thank you.

[spatch]

"Language is overrated, honey. Just point and grunt from now on."

"Ungh."

[dpolicar]

It says something about... well, something, that my first read of this was the reasonably good advice-to-writers to avoid relying on adjectives instead of finding the correct noun, but it seemed odd to be giving that level of advanced literary critique to:
a) a small child
b) someone's speech as opposed to their writing, and
c) the phrase "silly house", for which I can't find a reasonable noun alternative.

[minkrose]

My friend lakilika works in a children's museum in Indiana and has gotten yelled at for mentioning the "Jolly Holidays" exhibit to a Jehovah's Witness (who asked what exhibits were available) AND for having a Clifford exhibit in both Spanish and English, because Spanish is not an acceptable language for children to be exposed to, apparently.

lillibet, I can't tell you how happy I was when you announced you were pregnant because I knew you would be a responsible and intelligent mother and that you had a good partner to help you do that. Thank goodness you two are raising a child.