Does it make me pretentious if I want to improve my vocabulary? (grades, profession)

[Morinyo]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

I found this list and am working my way through the ones I haven't read.

Of the 40 I had read 31.


40 Classic Books You Should Have Read in*School - Half Price Books Blog - HPB.com

I checked out the above link. Thanks, it is great.

[PhotoProIP]

Originally Posted by xhayatox

My ultimate desire is to largely increase my vocabulary so that I can speak more eloquently, and because I want to become smarter. But at the same time, I feel like maybe my reasons are selfish and stupid? I feel that wanting to become smarter just makes me pretentious. I feel like I have something to prove? But I'm not really trying to be better than anyone. I simply want to be the best I can be. When I look at other intelligent people that have extensive vocabularies, I begin to admire them, and I wish that I could possess that level of knowledge and that I was equally as smart. I simply feel inferior to most people. I want to learn beyond what I currently know. I want to speak eloquently and be more intelligent! So does my desire to grow and learn make me pretentious, etc?

Being smarter amongst a bunch of idiots will make you look "pretentious" in THEIR LOW standards!

Time to hang out with people who want/or already are smarter/well spoken.

I think you should go ahead and do what you need; this is in NO WAY selfish; improving on oneself is NEVER selfish. Surrounding yourself with mind-like people might be harder since in America the new "movement" is to dumb down rather than smarten up.

Go ahead and be the best you can be! it is YOUR LIFE, run it as YOU like.

[Dale Cooper]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

It was stunning to me, though, that it was actually possible to work with teachers who were big users of the "I seen" and "I done" variety of dialect. The defense against not knowing/choosing to use proper grammar or, God forbid, spelling? "Well, I don't teach English." Oh. Got it.

And it's even more stunning when one hears these teachers being interviewed on radio or TV. It makes the entire school, city, even state look stupid.

Originally Posted by Bideshi

A person is judged in great part by how he speaks. I remember Dan Rather talking about how hard he worked to get rid of his native Okie accent in order to be more acceptable to network TV.

When I listen to recordings of FDR and compare them to our current president I realise how far we've fallen linguistically in a little more than a half century.

Yes, learn to speak effectively. It's a great advantage in life.

I agree to a point. Accent, however, has nothing to do with vocabulary.

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by Dale Cooper

And it's even more stunning when one hears these teachers being interviewed on radio or TV. It makes the entire school, city, even state look stupid.


I agree to a point. Accent, however, has nothing to do with vocabulary.

Yeah. I think some posters have confused the OP's desire to improve his vocabulary (knowing what words mean and moving into correct usage) with public speaking. Two very different things. A good public speaker is one who can speak and present in a way his audience understands. Vocabulary plays a part in that but more importantly is the ability to break complex ideas into understandable pieces.

[jtur88]

As long as you use the word correctly.. It is very pretentious-sounding to hear someone use an uncommon word, and use it in the wrong way or to mean the wrong thing.

[Jukesgrrl]

Originally Posted by xhayatox

But isn't vocabulary one aspect of intelligence? I always see people get praised for being so "intelligent" because they possess large vocabularies.

Xhayatox, that may seem true, but I agree with those who say that large vocabularies to not equate with native intelligence, which you obviously already possess. My grandfather was the smartest man I have ever met and he no doubt had an IQ off the charts, but he never went beyond 8th grade because he had to work to support his poor immigrant family. Nevertheless, he had an incredible ability to problem-solve, he knew about mathematics and science, he could build anything ... all signs of a smart person, not necessarily an educated one. To me, good grammar and using vocabulary properly indicate that one is educated and well-read. So those who suggest you can improve yourself by reading good books with a dictionary nearby are making an important point. A person doesn't need to go to school to get educated. You can do it yourself at the public library. My grandmother did. She never went beyond the fifth grade and when she died at age 83, the novel Shogun, James Clavell's Japanese saga, and the daily newspaper were at her chair side.

I'd be happy to take a crack at recommending some books for you. I've chosen these books because they are exceptionally well-written and teach us about the infinite varieties of the human experience — the recognition of which is another sign of a well-educated mind. These are just off the top of my head as contemporary books that have influenced me personally.

FICTION
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
Herzog, Saul Bellow
Falconer, John Cheever
The Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion
The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty
Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Rabbit, Run, John Updike
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Night in Question, Tobias Wolff
Berlin Noir, Philip Kerr
Gods and Monsters, Christopher Bram
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Speedboat, Renata Adler
Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver
Money, Martin Amis
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson

NONFICTION
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Black Boy, Richard Wright
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig

I also read a lot of genre fiction and crime novels are my favorites. These books range from classic detective books, to mystery puzzles, to police procedurals, to spy stories. Many of them are written beautifully and transcend their genre. For anyone who has yet to explore crime fiction, the American godfathers are Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye), and Ross Macdonald (The Underground Man). Other authors whose writing skills I admire include Alan Furst, Ian Rankin, Joseph Hansen, Martin Cruz Smith, P.D. James, Eric Ambler, Ngaio Marsh, John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Tanya French, Domenic Stansberry, Val McDermid, Benjamin Black, Henry Chang, Denise Mina, and Reed Farrel Coleman.

I'll leave it up to other to suggest other genre fiction, although I will say there are many books of merit in science fiction.

[HappyTexan]

I like Stephen King books. His style of writing really fires up my imagination and the movies don't do the books justice.
I've even re-read a few and catch things I didn't catch on the first reading.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by xhayatox

My ultimate desire is to largely increase my vocabulary so that I can speak more eloquently, and because I want to become smarter.

It sounds like you would want to focus on practicing the use of common, larger words and not necessarily more obscure words that most people would not recognize.

But at the same time, I feel like maybe my reasons are selfish and stupid? I feel that wanting to become smarter just makes me pretentious.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. It would only be pretentious if you tried use your vocabulary in an Aspergers-like attempt to show everyone how smart you are by using large and obscure words.

When I look at other intelligent people that have extensive vocabularies, I begin to admire them, and I wish that I could possess that level of knowledge and that I was equally as smart.

Are they intelligent because they have deep vocabularies or do they have extensive vocabularies because they are intelligent? A dictionary in and of itself is just a book full of words and is not necessarily intelligent or wise.

If you want to be intelligent, focus less on becoming a walking dictionary and more on learning how to analyze abstract ideas and on solving mathematical problems. Study philosophy and logic. Also, become worldly (the wisdom side of intelligence). Read newspapers and study history.

[Bhaalspawn]

Ayn Rand's novels should be on the list of required reading if you want to become worldly and intelligent, especially Atlas Shrugged. Rand's political philosophy is not necessarily correct, but she does a good job of dissecting issues and teaching you to dig beneath the surface of abstract political and philosophical ideas, making you a better analyst.

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by xhayatox

My ultimate desire is to largely increase my vocabulary so that I can speak more eloquently, and because I want to become smarter. But at the same time, I feel like maybe my reasons are selfish and stupid? I feel that wanting to become smarter just makes me pretentious. I feel like I have something to prove? But I'm not really trying to be better than anyone. I simply want to be the best I can be. When I look at other intelligent people that have extensive vocabularies, I begin to admire them, and I wish that I could possess that level of knowledge and that I was equally as smart. I simply feel inferior to most people. I want to learn beyond what I currently know. I want to speak eloquently and be more intelligent! So does my desire to grow and learn make me pretentious, etc?

You don't need anyone's permissions or approval, just do it.