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Phrase: Talk down to (someone)
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Knowledge is power. However, it’s wrong to misuse that power and talk down to someone.
No matter how much you know, there is always someone who knows more than you do.
Unless you want them to treat you like an idiot for not knowing what they do, you should not do it to someone else.
The leading cause for contention here is that often when we are talked down to by someone, we usually know what they do, but they, for some reason, don’t think so.
There are various reasons why one person may talk down to another: sexism, ageism, racism, and education level are a few.
The phenomenon of mansplaining is a perfect example.
Unfortunately, it’s still common for men of a particular generation to talk down to women.
Natives of a country tend to talk down to non-natives because we don’t speak the native language fluently or do so with a perceptible accent.
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It’s essential to keep in mind that no one knows everything; not all people know what you know, and vice versa.
Speaking to everyone with civility and politeness is the least we can do to respect each other.
Society has changed and has been changing for more than 60 years.
The phenomenon of mansplaining is no longer acceptable, and immigrants often have high post-secondary education levels.
Talking down to people because of how we perceive them is nothing but a way to show our own insecurities.
We should be nice and share knowledge instead of talking down to others.
Who knows? We might learn something ourselves.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 66.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.