Chris and English

Chris has no idea what this is.

Chris's English skills, like most other things related to Chris, leave much to be desired. Much of this can be attributed to his autism, which often results in awkward speech patterns. He spent years of his childhood mute, and took speech therapy classes at James Madison University. Strangely, his grasp of English actually appears to have grown weaker over recent years, probably due to how little real interaction he has with others.

CWC-isms

Chris has a tendency to make up his own words for things, then use them with reckless abandon while assuming whoever is reading will be able to understand exactly what he means. As such, we get terms like "B-dog" and "noviophobia." He also tends to appropriate existing words, giving them new meanings based entirely on his own skewed logic. This is why, in Chris-speak, navy isn't a sea-based military force and China isn't an Asian nation.

In the case of words like "da," Chris might be trying to take a pass at using slang to sound casual and relaxed, but instead, he ends up sounding like a marketing executive grasping desperately for credibility. Other famous CWC-isms like "tobacky," "niggos" and "gaybian" are the result of a different problem altogether: Chris is a manchild who can't even say out loud the names of objects or concepts which he finds repulsive. The use of these terms is a prime example of his immaturity.

These CWC-isms combine with his existing speech problems and his accent to form what you might call logorrhea, literally "word flux." Basically, it's verbal diarrhea: a constant stream of almost-words reaching desperately for meaning, only to fail hard.

“	if I could have it my way, I'd make it illegal and forbidden to have homo Men; women are safe. Also, I would have the secondary definition of the word "gay", being Homosexual, REMOVED from the word in the dictionaries, and all instinctions and sayings of the word will ONLY LEGALLY be used to mean HAPPY, as it was originally intended among songs like "Deck the Halls"	”
Chris, 02 January 2009, 11:59

As you can see in the above quote, this abuse of language isn't limited to just the commonplace CWC-isms we've come to know and tolerate. "Instinctions" is a word Chris made up for this passage, and likely never intends to use again. Playing fast and loose with language just further decreases the impact of whatever Chris is trying to say. Also of note is that Chris wants to make it illegal to use a word a certain way, which is hypocritical, and — quite frankly — creepy.

His own lexicon, like many other aspects of his personality, demonstrates exactly how self-centered he is. While the whole purpose of language is to express thoughts and ideas to other people, he has managed to turn vocabulary into a brick wall, by crafting a mashed-together lexicon that makes sense only to him.

Written language

Chris's writing is a complete mess from top to bottom, and that is putting it mildly.

For starters, he doesn't understand basic syntax and semantics: he uses words in the wrong context, or as incorrect parts of speech, and his grammar is abhorrent. Also, he is obviously afraid that whatever he's feeling won't be adequately conveyed through his words, and tries to make up for this by relying on repetition and a distinctive ALL CAPS style. For similar reasons, he tends Capitalize Words At Random, Especially those which hold Importance to the Sentence, or the ones that address Important Abstract Concepts that Chris tries to Systematically Understand on account of finding them too Complex and Mystifying.

“	And the ONLY REASON I have not had sex yet in my lifetime WITH A WOMAN yet, is because the WHOLE TIME, I have been SHY; kept down with the Personal Fear of nearly EVERY Woman I see being Already Paired-Up with a Boyfriend.	”
Chris proving that he never proofreads. From the CWCkipedia article on homosexuality.

Beyond these basic issues of grammar and capitalization, Chris's writings often lack focus. Much like any 6-year-old, he has trouble concentrating on a single topic for extended periods of time, instead veering off topic in order to babble about whatever is on his mind. This practice of writing stream-of-consciousness style, combined with his obvious disinterest in proofreading or otherwise checking over what he's written, inevitably results in a large number of confusing run-on sentences. A single sentence might cover multiple topics, often ones that don't have anything to do with the original subject matter. It gives his writing a rambling, disjointed feeling, and makes it very difficult to understand exactly what his point is.

“	...while the Movie Women are "Just Characters", Rosechu is playing as her own "Character" as well. Also, there is MORE THAN ONE Rosechu; Why do you think I've dubbed them respectively "Bubbles Rosechu", "Angelica Rosechu", and recently introduced, "Lolisa Rosechu", of whom her Boyfriend, "Jamsta Sonichu", was the one who Interviewed Blanca and her Jiggliami on Radio Station, KCWC.	”
Chris, somehow jumping from movies not being reality to his imaginary radio station.

It doesn't help that Chris feels it's his obligation to be "honest," which means that he feels the need to mention irrelevant little details, as anything less would not mean he's not telling the whole truth.

Spelling

Chris had a chance to correct this spelling mistake during a retcon of Sonichu 7, but instead proved he can't spell for shit.

With all the other problems with Chris's writing, his poor spelling somehow manages to stand out. He regularly misspells words that should be easy to spell, such as "mies" (miles) and "dood" (good). He seems to have trouble with switching "eni"s for "ein"s, as in "seinor" (senior) and "geinus" (genius). Sometimes, he seems to "sound out" words, such as "characiture" (caricature), rather than taking a few seconds to spell-check them in Word, Firefox, Google, or any of the dozens of other programs that would automatically correct his spelling.

It was only relatively recently discovered that the term Anchuent is supposed to be a pun, and not just another of Chris's random acts of butchery against the English language. This largely goes to show that Chris's inability to spell correctly is so persistent that, when he deliberately misspells something, it goes completely unnoticed for years.

Semantics

As demonstrated in CWC-isms above, Chris has severe problems understanding the meanings of words (he described the word "benevolent" as sounding "derogatory"), and just about anything even marginally abstract or metaphorical.

Muddled-up proverbs

A good demonstration of Chris's lack of understanding of semantics is the fact that he doesn't really understand proverbs; he frequently recites them incorrectly or clearly misses the point. When he comes up with his own, he doesn't exactly try to veil any wisdom in carefully crafted phrases.

Examples of Chrisverbial Wisdom:

• "Those who teach, can't."
• "shaped OBJECT is the BODY of the Item, but the STICKER is the Item's SOUL."
• "A sound thought is a good thought, unless it is a bad idea."
• "The pen is mightier than the sword, yet it is more permanent than a pencil."

The last illustrates several problems. "The pen is mightier than the sword" is, of course, generally regarded as a statement that words can have bigger consequences than violence. Chris doesn't understand this, and tries to somehow interpret this concretely: "pen is more permanent than a pencil." It is also problematic because normally, "A, yet B" is usually a statement by contrasts: "A may be true, but a contrary example B is true as well." Still, Chris fails at explaining why it's so important that pens are more permanent than pencils, and what does that have to do with pens and their relative might vis-a-vis swords — the meaning of Chris's proverb remains unclear.

Rhetorical comparisons

Chris takes rhetorical comparisons very literally; he gets extremely attached to the exact meanings of the these statements, and not the bigger point that the other speaker is trying to make. Examples:

Kacey's father: You know, I think the last book Kacey read was last week. And she reads books like you probably stuff candy down your throat.

Chris: Stuff…candy…don't…I stuff vegetables down my throat! I stuff green beans! I stuff broccoli! I stuff corn! I stuff carrots!

…

Kacey's father: I don't know shit about computers and I can do that. I barely even know what a Windows is.

Chris: You barely know what a Windows is?

Kacey's father: Don't… don't patronize me.

Chris: I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to understand what you just said, you say you don't understand Windows?

Kacey's father: What I'm trying to say is, I don't know shit about computers and I could figure out how to do that.

In the first example, Chris clearly only hears "You[…] stuff candy down your throat" and interprets the negative tone as an accusation that this is a bad thing, then tries to prove that he does not, in fact, stuff candy down his throat — just good stuff like vegetables. Because he's threatened, he forgets that this is used as a rhetorical comparison, and hence the original point that the Dad here was trying to make gets lost in sands of time. This is also one of the reasons why conversations with Chris sometimes branch out, lead nowhere, and cause frustration and tears (and tears of mirth for everyone but the two people who are conversing at the time).

Literal interpretation

Chris has the tendency to take questions and suggestions very literally. Example:

Q: Do you listen to any music while you draw the comics?

A: Yes.

To a normal person, the question that was posed would be interpreted along the lines of "What kind of music — what bands, what musical genres — do you listen while you draw the comics, assuming you listen music at all while drawing the comics? If you listen to the music, why does this particular music help you draw things? If not, do you find music distracting, and why?" but instead, Chris interpreted "Do you listen to any music?" literally as a question that can be answered "yes" or "no." Simply put, he is unable to see why people are asking specific questions that can be answered yes or no, and unable to elaborate or give rationales for his opinions unless those things are specifically asked from him.

Another example:

Alec: Please stop running away from me.

Chris: I'm not running away from you, I'm right here.

This was in response to Chris trying to end the call after an inconvenient discussion.

Television jargon

In the Sonichu comic, Chris is also almost consistently using television terminology instead of comics terminology, and the television terminology seems to seep into his other language use. He's urging people to "stay tuned" to see new developments in his YouTube channel; this may seem innocuous at first, as regular people might use "stay tuned" in non-TV situations, but in Chris's case, this may be indication of a bigger issue. Chris refers to himself as "Great Director Chandler" and calls his alternate versions "director's cuts." In the comic, he consistently refers to "episodes" rather than chapters, has used "TV-MA/TV-14/TV-Y7" ratings for certain scenes, is talking of a second "season" of the comic — apparently a "reboot" will commence with a "clip show episode" in Sonichu 11. It is as if he's familiar with only one set of jargon that he's applying to all similar situations, ignoring the fact that most people speak of "comic writers" instead of "directors", "chapters" instead of "episodes," "volumes" instead of "seasons," rate their comics with some rating system that is probably similar to, but not exact duplicate of, the one used in television — and so on.

Other strange points

Chris seems to cling to trademarks. In Mailbag 10, for example, he specifically says a couple of times that he has saved material on his Memory Stick and Memory Stick Duo. Not "saved on memory card" or just "saved"; people generally don't care what you save your fanart on, as long as it's saved. Chris, however, wants to be specific: the fan material was saved on a Memory Stick Duo.

Spoken language

Chris comes off slightly better when speaking, but that's really not saying much. When he addresses the world in one of his many videos, his speech is peppered with vocalized pauses such as "uhh," "hmmm," and "yeah" as he struggles to find the right thing to say. He also tends to stutter and repeat himself.

“	They should have given it perfect- they should have given it five out of five stars... and ten out of ten. Between G4... tee, uh, between G4 and, uh, the Game Informer.	”
Chris attempting to recommend Brutal Legend.

Chris does a better job staying on-topic when speaking than he does while writing, likely because when speaking to a camera or another person, he has a clearer idea of the point he wants to get across. Going off on rambling tangents still occasionally happens, but usually only when Chris is trying to be funny.

“	...even to make his own ass bleed. I mean, that story, it's just about as incredibly fabricated as Donna Tubb's time over at when she had to borrow R. Kelly's bathroom... The Cleveland Show, new episodes Sun- every Sunday on FOX.	”
Chris confusing humor with advertising

While Chris seems to be at least capable of coherent conversation while calm, things go downhill when he's upset, enraged, or confused. In particular, his tendency to throw childlike temper tantrums has resulted in some very bizarre outbursts. When angry, Chris still retains his tendency to go in tangents and be very proper about compulsively giving all of the relevant information, which means that he's often unable to sum his anger up in just a few succinct words.

“	...SO GET IT THROUGH YOUR DAMN FUCKING SKULL AND CALL ME A REAL NAME THAT have God has been given to me and the bear at Regency Square Shopping center, during 1989, YOU DAMN MOCKING BASTARD!	”
Chris inserting random details into a hissy fit.

Interestingly, comparisons of his vocal patterns offer one of the few signs of actual development that Chris has ever displayed. Consider his earliest videos; his speech was courtly and disjointed, and delivered almost exclusively in short, monotonous bursts:

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There are exceptions to this, but these generally consisted of short phrases apparently culled from TV (note the change in pitch in the above video when Chris describes himself as "ever so lonesome"). All in all, Chris displayed all the attributes one would expect from an autistic, as well as from someone who is completely unused to talking to people.

Comparisons with the present day show a marked change in Chris's manner of speech:

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Chris may not sound any more naturalistic, but he does show more of a semantic range than he did two years ago. Clues as to why this has occurred can be found in the subject matter of the videos - Chris perhaps now has realized to some extent that he must engage with people on their terms in order to be taken seriously. While this may not be a massive change, it is still heartening to see that the trolling is stirring the emaciated hulk of his dignity into some sort of creaking action. Who knows? In another two years he may have acquired the vocal skills of a child of kindergarten age.

Idiosyncrasies

Chris also has a number of idiosyncrasies which appear frequently in his speech. Firstly, the aforementioned disjointed speech patterns, which are broken up by a number of idiologistical phrases, which crop up with varying regularity but which sound very similar every time he uses them. Listen closely to the way he introduces himself - he is "Chrishinwessonchanler. From Ruckersville Vir-gin-ya." Whenever Chris introduces himself, he basically repeats this exact phonetic pattern, including pauses, the rushed and garbled name, and the staccato rhythm of "Virginia". This is of course explainable by his autism, but it is also related to his sense of humor, his plagiarism, and his desire for control over those he sees as oppressing him.

It may also be related to the less often seen idiosyncrasy which causes him to express disgust with a word physically. For example, in the famous Smell Yo Duck music video, Chris first avoided saying the word "dick" altogether, and when forced to repeat the video, showed signs of distress bordering on illness. While this is obviously an exaggeration of Chris' feelings, it is notable that he should feel any particular sensation about simple words whatsoever. This reaction raises the possibility that, so long as he is not faking it altogether, Chris may be a synaesthesiac.

See also

• Speech Impediment
• Chris's resume
• The High School Story
• Chris and writing
• Anything written on CWCipedia