> > I just read Sam's latest addition to the Rinkchat archives (Ice Storms) and I *have* to say this.
> >
> > I *suck*.
>
> Nah, you don't. Environment invariably affects dialect, and nobody is immune to expansion of vocabulary through exposure.
>
> Take my grandmother, for example. Now, she has never been on the Net in her life, and doesn't even know how to turn a computer ON. But she lived around me for all the years I was a teenager, and she spent the last ten years of her long law enforcement career as a jail administrator...I'm not sure which did it to her, but invariably the expression "sucks" was added to her vocabulary as well.
>
> (Odd that I hear her say that and don't even blink, but the other day I nearly fell flat on my face in surprise when I heard a middle-aged woman exclaim "Duh!", but I digress...)
>
> Anyway, the way you speak is not only a reflection on your own mind and intellect, but also on the environment in which you find yourself most frequently. This goes for both online and offline mannerisms, sometimes separately affected and sometimes not. I had a friend once who picked up the expression "LOL" from AOL, and caught himself using it offline. That was...rather amusing, actually.
>
> I myself frequent chats and forums in which, due to mutual interests, members often pepper their dialogue with colloquial Japanese. As a result, it's become more or less ingrained, and I tend to do it without thinking...not that I mind, of course, because I talk that way offline as well. (It also, of course, has evoked the anime emoticon...^_^;;)
>
> But I'm rambling. Bottom line, don't sweat it...just let what will be, be. Nobody will think the less of you just because you think something sucks, so don't let it get to you. :)
>
> -Trunks (who doesn't suck...at least, I don't think I do...)

I've found myself picking up a lot of expressions from people I know online. (I don't even spend that much time here anymore and it still surprises me how often I find myself describing something as "ruling!"...) Not just online, really, but anywhere. "Gah" I'd been using after picking it up from someone I used to spend far too much time with. "Argh" came from someone who closed just about every paragraph of a 1500-word EMail with it.

Occasionally I'll hear something come out of my mouth the rhythm of which I'd swear isn't mine... and you can tell what sort of authors I've been reading most recently by how my speech has changed. I'm really suggestible that way. (Then again, the last book I read was _Dark and Stormy Rides Again_, a collection of winners of the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. Please tell me I'm not *that* suggestible...)

But it's not always bad. Just... different. I like some of my assimilated expressions.

(About swear words: I never used to curse, because I curse like a Vulcan - "colorful metaphors", a la Star Trek IV - but I'll let out the occasional expletive now. I'm not sure what I think of this; I try to stay away from it in writing. Though I use it so infrequently it *does* have the intended effect....)

Argh, more to say, but must be going...

-Fob"after spending an hour at work-study with the very British orchestra director before going online, finally no longer has the urge to say 'shed-yool'"ulis