Way to get girls (?!): the new column for the new Dragon.

[Wormwood]

Add to that the article was about change and D&D, and that is a great bonus!

Oh man, we definitely should have expected a backlash!

 

[billd91]

Could it be? Another Rhode Islander?

Quick--what's a bubbler?

Weird. I wouldn't have guessed a Wisconsin term like bubbler would hang on in New England.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Wow, I wouldn't have guessed that these words are uncommon in the UK.

I first encountered ribald probably in my early teens, and met it frequently enough that it sunk in. The phrase 'ribald humor' is really quite common.

I met conflate in college, and it comes up frequently in academic writing of all kinds.

Anyway... it's certainly chock-full of personal references which might not be easily interpreted. I didn't know what Kashi was, but it was clearly a food and I didn't feel the urge to go look it up. 'ISO of dungeon master' took me a minute to figure out too--it wasn't immediately obvious to me that she was imitating a personal ad.

I do some work as a French->English translator, I live in France, and my wife is French, but I will never have the depth of cultural knowledge that growing up in a country confers. When I try to read "chatty" French, I'm often totally at sea. I wouldn't take that as a deficiency in the writing, however, unless I encountered it in a medium where some other style was clearly called for.

Cheers!

Yeah, ribald most people should know, but conflate would be a very poor choice of word for pretty much any medium except a college-level paper. Someone gave you 50% of their students who would know it above. I think that's generous. I'd say at most 5% of Americans know and understand the word conflate. In a bizarre coincidence, I have empirical evidence for this:

When I took, I want to say the PSATs as a sophomore in high school, the only question I got wrong on the verbal section was an analogy in which 'conflate' participated. At that point, I had never heard of the word before (though I had no trouble with anything else or any of the other words on the exam). After the test, I had to ask over thirty people before I found someone who could explain it to me. Of course, my sample size is small, but still, I think there's a point here.

 

[Anti-Sean]

I think they used the words 'ribald' and 'conflate' in the last anime I watched.

 

[No Name]

Don't let the badinage get out of hand.

 

[Fobok]

Personally, I thought the article was well-written informal writing, something you might see in a newspaper column but with a D&D twist.

As for the language barrier, that's always going to be an issue. I'm Canadian, and while we share a lot of terms with the US, some are quite different. I've learned I have to remember where an article is written to figure them out.

I will say, this is no different than reading British published articles. I've seen columns written by British authors who did not hold back on the British slang just because it was on the internet.

 

[Rechan]

Wow. It surprises me lots of people aren't familiar with ribald. Especially with how easily D&D fans and Renfaire attenders go together.

 

[fuindordm]

No such thing.

Bubblahs, on the othah hand, are what you drink watah from.

My mom's family is from Fall Rivah, and I spent a couple years in high school at Rogers in Newport.

Wicked! I was born and bred in Providence, a stone's throw from P'tuckeh. I miss Del's lemonade and Portuguese sweetbread!

Did you know Emeril Lugasi is from Fall Rivah?

 

[fuindordm]

I think they used the words 'ribald' and 'conflate' in the last anime I watched.

Records of LSAT War?

 

[Nellisir]

Jimmies are what most people call chocolate sprinkles. They are only chocolate. If someone offers you jimmies, and they are rainbow colored, that person is wrong and may be mocked.

No, those are just rainbow jimmies. They're a bit fancy and swanky, but they're still jimmies. Sprinkles go on sugar cookies.

Here's a regional sweet most people will never try: syrup snow.
Best if the syrup is straight from the pan, and the snow from...well, the snow should be fresh. And white.