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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible).

They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.

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I never quite understood the obsession with keeping some language away from children that everyone uses themselves. The words are there because they are needed. Walking the euphemism treadmill is a Sisyphus effort.

Let them build a decent vocabulary before exposing them to the words that replace all sorts of other words ;)

I want them to be clever with how they use language. Or at least have the knowledge to be clever, if they apply themselves.

I heard of a study [1] claiming that people that swear more have a larger vocabulary in general, so your efforts might be counter-intuitive to your goal.

Don't see how deprivation of some words leads to the knowledge of other words, either. Maybe if you interject and correct swear word usage by providing other words that would be a better fit.

> Taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency.

> Taboo words comprise pejoratives and slurs.

> Taboo fluency is correlated with neuroticism and openness.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03880...

That's probably true for people who know the words but is it true for people who don't? I expect most people use most common words at about the same level of fluency.

I know the word "computer". I expect people's "computer" fluency is correlated with their general fluency. Would teaching Victorian peasants "computer" increase their general fluency?

When EBv2.0 was tiny, like could walk but not really talk tiny, and I was WFH Because Coronapocalypse, he one day did a straight deadass impersonation of me.

Picked up a cordless mouse and held it up to his little ear like a phone, "Hello? Yeah? Yeah..." and started wandering around the living room with it, occasionally scowling and holding his other hand up to his ear, "yeah... yeah... well yeah, yeah? Naja, yeah... nah, nein! <waving expansively> Nein nein nein... Yeah, 'kay, bye."

Put the mouse down on the table.

"Uuuuuurgh....."

Absolutely nailed it, Gary Oldman level precision.

Absolutely golden moments.

Tiny language models.

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