Eleven quirky things about language enthusiasts

1. They live and breathe the words of their beloved language.

They go fanatical about words and their usage to the extent that they can even create a pool of words and swim in it all the time.

2. Thesauruses and dictionaries are like religious books for them.

These will be available with them in all possible editions and sizes. They would even have books on phonetics and punctuation.

3. They can outwit people with words without letting them notice it.

They are exceedingly good with vocabulary and phonics. They might even rant the obstinate nerve out of others over any irresponsible use of language.

4. They are famous as grammar cops (which they don’t like themselves to be called as) and serve as excellent proofreaders and editors.

They check the accuracy of the tense, spellings and grammar before they send even a message across, let alone mails and write-ups. One won’t ever see the use of the symbol ‘&’ in place of ‘and’.

5. Their friends look up to them to give their feelings the right expression.

Their friends know that they won’t write or approve even a short note as perfect without careful scrutiny of the language.

6. They don’t have words like ‘really’ and ‘very’ in their dictionary; they would rather use ‘extremely’ or ‘profusely’.

They cannot let go of any word without researching about its parts of speech and usages.

7. They look up the Greek and Latin origins of every new word, and sometimes even what prefixes and suffixes stand for.

They would know that prefixes and suffixes like poly-, omni-, meta- and -logy mean ‘many’, ‘everywhere’, ‘beyond’ and ‘the study of’ respectively.

8. They are most likely to be counted among polyglots and conlangers.

Polyglots are people who love to learn different languages. Conlang stands for constructed language, so conlangers are the ones who fabricate languages for various reasons, such as linguistic experimentation, for usage by a fictional race in a book they are writing, or just as a hobby.

9. They hate the use of double negatives.

Double negatives are damaging and needless.

10. They are hawk-eyed, and the most observant ones.

They are the best critics and their appreciation of content is truly valuable.

11. The more analytical they become, the more creativity brews in them.

This makes them outstanding at wordplay.