How to develop habit of start using good vocabulary while speaking

People know a lot of words but often  develop a habit of using only those words in our talks which come to our mind at that instant (even though we may be knowing more suitable words) and never using so many of the words which we know. Often the talks involve those same repeated words which we keep using in our daily lives which become our comfort zone.

How can one learn to speak good vocabulary?  So, my question is lesser about how to know more and more words, but is more on how to actually start using those words in our daily communications.  Thanks

Well, sadly, your question highlights the need to know good grammar even more. Even if you aren't fluent in the florid employment of luxurious vocabulary, improper conjugations or mis-use of idiomatic constructs can torpedo even the simplest of utterances.

And there's precious little logic in those small details, so one has to mostly learn them by rote. Nor does it help that fluent construction varies with time and place or that prepositions rarely map logically from one language to another. I seem, in particular to have been noticing that the phrase "different to" rather than "different from" or "different than" has been becoming more common, although some of that may also be due to a larger English english and Indian english user community here in the Ranch than what I normally encounter in the so-called "real" world.

In that particular instance, however, all 3 constructs are considered valid. Whereas a phrase like "doubt in" screams "This is not my primary language".

But considering vocabulary, there are plenty of resources. Indeed, some newspapers used to run a "word a day" column and you can still get desk calendars like that. A popular book a a few years back (OK, more than a few now!) was titled "I Always Look Up Egregious".

I once opined that the late US Conservative pundit William Safire probably read himself to sleep at night from the Oxford Unabridged English Dictionary. That was back when it was possible ro pretend to intellectual thought even if you weren't a "pointy-headed ivory tower librul with no common since (sic)". Those days, alas are behind us here in the USA and now thinking iz bad, MAGA!

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . And there's precious little logic in those small details . . .

All languages have their illogicalities, but English is one of the worst. Probably because it has such a varied history and ancestry.

"different to" rather than "different from" or "different than"  . . . .

I know somebody who got in trouble for saying, “different to,” rather than, “different from.” Round here, nobody says, “different than.”
A few years ago there was controversy because the Government decreed schools should teach “however” should never be the first word. Somebody told me a few weeks ago that Scottish schools have been told not to teach about semicolons, that ebing presented as a recipe for disaster.
Agree about reading. To enlarge one's vocabulary, reading, reading, reading should help. And every time one reads an unfamiliar grammatical construct, look it up in a decent book about grammar. And be prepared for differences of (not than, not to, not from, but of ) opinion from book to book. And learn puncutation; see Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. And never write a sentence starting, “And.”

And spelign.

"Different than" for me has a different context than "different from/to", which I'd be more inclined to use as a relative comparison, which is different than looking at two essentially unrelated things. A bit of a fuzzy distinction perhaps, but I do consider one usage different from the other. I suspect that it's based on words that are implied but not necessarily explicitly in the phrase in question.

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . "Different than" . . .

In the UK it is much commoner to say, “other than.”

It's very hard to do that, because mostly speaking isn't a conscious process. You don't decide what you're going to say before you say it, at least not in most situations. And you don't describe the situations where you want to use good vocabulary -- when you're talking to your friends, when you're discussing the purchase of something with a store clerk, when you're discussing a programming problem with co-workers, when you're talking to a police officer? Sometimes using good vocabulary is more important and sometimes it isn't.

Anyway, to change the habitual vocabulary you use is the same as changing other habits. Like quitting smoking, for example. You have to be prepared to notice that you're using a habit that you want to change, which isn't going to happen when you're having an argument about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. I'm no expert on habit-changing so I can't say more than that, just be aware that it's a difficult thing to do.

Tim Holloway wrote: But considering vocabulary, there are plenty of resources. Indeed, some newspapers used to run a "word a day" column and you can still get desk calendars like that

Thanks. Yes, that's good way for expanding the vocabulary.

While expanding the vocabulary is what we all should keep doing everyday, this question is less about expanding the vocabulary and more about not being able to even use the words we already know. This comes from habit. Like one may be knowing say 1000 words (which one would keep expanding daily) but out of those 1000 words there would be the same repeated 50 words that I keep using in daily lives (many people have this habit of speaking what comes to mind instead of thinking about the most appropriate words for something).

Paul Clapham wrote:
Anyway, to change the habitual vocabulary you use is the same as changing other habits. Like quitting smoking, for example. You have to be prepared to notice that you're using a habit that you want to change, which isn't going to happen when you're having an argument about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. I'm no expert on habit-changing so I can't say more than that, just be aware that it's a difficult thing to do.

Thanks. That is a good point, it is more about habit changing.

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . "Different than" . . .

In the UK it is much commoner to say, “other than.”

I dunno. Saying "…which is other than looking at two essentially unrelated things" doesn't sound right to me.

Other than that, I'd generally agree.

A commentary on Paul's offering. The only thing that keeps us able to communicate at speed is that our brains don't formulate communications wordby-word so much as phrase-by-phrase.

A lot of speech comes from taking a "keyword" that triggers a stock value  and allows our speaking mechanisms to play the phrase automatically, freeing up our higher thinking centers to concentrate more on overall meaning. We have similar receptors for listening, as anyone who's tried to translate a foreign language by word-by-word conversion can attest.

So learning new words is the start, but to use them effectively and fluently, we have to also bind them into a conversational context. Our mental phrase dictionary, in other words.

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . Other than that, I'd generally agree.

I wasn't clear. I meant that “than” is most likely to be preceded by “other.” Sorry.

Tim Holloway wrote: but to use them effectively and fluently, we have to also bind them into a conversational context. Our mental phrase dictionary, in other words.

So what is the way for doing this? Try harder to break the habbit ? Slow down a bit while talking ?

Monica Shiralkar wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote: but to use them effectively and fluently, we have to also bind them into a conversational context. Our mental phrase dictionary, in other words.

So what is the way for doing this? Try harder to break the habbit ? Slow down a bit while talking ?

More like talk to yourself. That's how babies do it. You're developing a reflex and that means you have to consciously exercise offline, repeating the phrases until they become automatic..

Tim Holloway wrote:

More like talk to yourself. That's how babies do it. You're developing a reflex and that means you have to consciously exercise offline, repeating the phrases until they become automatic..

Thanks. It sounds like a good way for this.

Monica Shiralkar wrote:. . . Slow down a bit while talking ?

Speaking slowly is useful, particularly if lecturing, reading aloud, etc., but that is a separate issue.

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Speaking slowly is useful, particularly if lecturing, reading aloud, etc., but that is a separate issue.

Thanks. How is it useful if reading aloud ?

It makes you easier to listen to.

Campbell Ritchie wrote:It makes you easier to listen to.

Thanks.

Here's some words for you:

https://today.wayne.edu/news/2024/01/08/wayne-state-word-warriors-release-2024-list-61301

Ironically, not all of the words on that list are unknown to me.

I rather like "blatherskite", though it's something I view in association with Ireland or maybe the Old West.

I don't think of "dollop" as unusual at all, but then I do a lot of cooking.

"Kaffeeklatsch" evokes the 1950s give or take when women were stay-at-home wives and had their little social groups.

"Petrichor", despite the claims isn't always as pleasant as they portray it. I knew someone who claimed to be allergic to it.

The Wizard of Id comic strip featured a lawyer who strongly resembled W.C. Fields. His name was "Larsen E. Pettifogger". Not to be confused with Foghorn Leghorn, who is a chicken.

We've seen a lot of pettifoggery lately, and definitely too many rawgabbits. I may have to add rawgabbit and pawky to my collection.

Tim Holloway wrote:Here's some words for you:

https://today.wayne.edu/news/2024/01/08/wayne-state-word-warriors-release-2024-list-61301

Thanks but these look like some uncommon words. Looking for ones more relevant in IT industry too.

Oh trust me, the industry is full of blatherskites and rawgabbits. Then there are the boffins.

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . "blatherskite" . . . association with Ireland or maybe the Old West. . . .

I always thought it was a Scottish word; Merriam‑Webster seems to agree about that.

"Kaffeeklatsch" evokes the 1950s . . .

I don't have many memories (or any memories) before the 1950s, but I thought Kaffeeklatsch was older than that. The same resource says it was first recorded in 1888.

Yep, I'll take "blatherskite" as Scottish. From Old Norse, originally, though "blather" does resemble "blarney", only by co-incidence. A lot of Scots and Irish settled both the US South and West.  Not my Scots relatives, though. They headed straight for the engineering jobs in upstate New York.

"Klatsch" is German for gossip, and that's what the stereotypical kaffeeklatsch featured, along, of course, with coffee and cake. But the Germans give America credit for the word, even though it's perfectly cromulent as a German construct. May actually first have come from the Pensylvania Dutch (who are German "deutsch" not actually Dutch). Germans have featured around Pennsylvania so long that Benjamin Franklin himself was prejudiced against German immigrants. "Buildeth ye a Walle" he said (not really!). But it's a fine old American tradition to want to close the door after we got in.

Main reason I think about kaffeeklatsch as a mid-20th century thing is that it's from a period where middle-class America was prosperous enough and loaded with enough labour-saving devices that it made it possible for wives to have weekly home get-togethers and the term shows up a lot in literature and media dating to that time.

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . fine old American tradition to want to close the door after we got in. . . .

Maybe, but lots of other places seem to like closing the door too

Tim Holloway wrote:Oh trust me, the industry is full of blatherskites and rawgabbits. Then there are the boffins.

Yes, but if one uses such words during spoken communication in IT, less half of the audience involved will understand it (without googling). I think it is better to use words which are apt and also the audience can understand.