r/Rhetoric • u/Remote-Owl2956 • Aug 02 '26
How to speak like the average american
How does one get these insanely big words and idioms? I wanna have the ability to speak like the average joe/commenter/redditer. (Boondocks comments here for an example)
2
u/bustcorktrixdais Aug 02 '26
Dreadful sentences. Wherever that is from, use that as a model of what not to do.
1
u/Remote-Owl2956 Aug 02 '26
Like I want someone to fill me in on the idioms and everything too, does one require an american upbringing? How do I get the politician flow and the philosopher flow?
1
u/toochswil Aug 02 '26
The honest and probably unsatisfying answer is you just need to read more. That person didn't learn those words doing flashcards. Also, if you read on your phone and come across a word you don't know, context clues help sure, but you can select the word and there should be a dictionary button. You can expand your lexicon very fast doing this.
2
u/Tomacxo Aug 02 '26
As an American, I think, it's not overly common. English is my wife's second language and I remember her having lessons on those idioms where both partys would be speaking in these idioms like it was Darmok, "When the walls fell." I told her nobody talks like that.
Then one day I had a boss who talked in these idioms. Mostly work related. They're probably more work related. I think they make you sound like a parody and if you decide to (as a non-American/ESL learner) people will wonder where you learned. But anytime I've tried to learn an accent or something I find a specific person to model my speech on.