Is 'conversate' a proper word?

[Ethereal]

educated people say converse

And people with a giant pole up their ass.

[Captain Obvious]

educated people say converse

You mean the ones who know their ABC's?

[William]

Whilst on this subject, another word to which my mum objects in its common use - is 'inspirational'. She says the word should be 'inspiring' in most cases, but people use 'inspirational' cos it sounds grander to the poorly educated. I also Googled that and found these comments -

"Inspirational" shows intent; "Inspiring" shows effect. So, "Inspirational" often carries an ironic comment on the pretensions of the subject. It is often hyperbole. "Inspiring" is a clean and simple word meaning to be filled with breath which suggests that there was something "breathtaking" about the subjects action. I chose "inspiring" in all uses, except the ironic.

inspiring is typically used to qualify something post-facto: 'The speech was inspiring.'

inspirational is common in qualifying in functional terms: 'He is going to deliver an inspirational speech.' (intended to be or do/ supposed to be or do, looking forward).

So we are using the wrong word most of the time?

[Ethereal]

Merriam-Webster:

Conversate has the power to upset a great many people, if the hundreds of comments left by users of this dictionary under the word’s entry are any indication. One of the reasons it annoys people is because conversate is a back-formation, a type of word made by removing a portion of an existing word (such as the suffix). Thus, escalate was formed by shortening escalator; televise comes from television, and donate was made from donation. There are many hundreds of words in English made this way, but some people will forever look askance at words such as liaise (formed by back-formation from liaison).

Conversate also upsets some people because it's most frequently used in song lyrics, particularly rap and hip-hop lyrics—as in the Case lyric "Tell me can we conversate/So we can get to learn each other" ("Conversate," 2001). In this instance, as in "Conversate for a few, cause in a few, we gon' do/What we came to do, ain't that right boo?" (Notorious B.I.G., "Big Poppa," 1994), conversate seems to be chosen in part because it's considered nonstandard: it's more striking and surprising than "standard" English, and it has a more dramatic effect. Much of the reaction against conversate involves accusations that it's "not a real word" because people get it from music—or that it's "not a real word" because it's rooted in African-American slang.

Yet conversate is not a product of rap music, and the earliest examples of its use seem regional, not racial. The word has been in fairly consistent written use for almost 200 years. The earliest known citation is from 1829, in the North-Carolina Free Press: “I love to conversate with wise men on any sorter ticks, more espesially pollyticks.” Although uses of conversate in the beginning and middle of the 19th century are obvious attempts to reproduce language that would be thought of as dialectical or uneducated, they do not appear to be specific to any ethnicity. An article from the Southern Orator in 1853, titled Burlesque of Electioneering Political Speeches, contains the line “The first and most important subject which I shall conversate on, is the election subject.”

[...]

It's a word in American-English with roots in the southern states.

[del]

And people with a giant pole up their ass.

that sounds uncomfortable

you should switch to a latvian

[Bethere]

I saw a poster use it yesterday in a post and I thought it sounded interesting (never heard it before,) so I used it at dinner time. My mum was horrified, and said it was an Americanism, but that even most educated Americans objected to it. But my mum can be a grammar Obersturmbannführer at times, so I asked our English teacher this morning. He said that it may appear in an American dictionary, but was not recognised as anything other than American slang by the OED, and I should avoid ever using it, as the perfectly well established 'converse' has the same meaning.I Googled it and got mixed results.This site said -http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2...rapher-part-4/But a lot of other sites said it was slang and should be avoided, as it makes you sound uneducated - cos the perfectly good word 'converse' has been around for centuries. So what do people here think? Use it or not?

Psst: How about, "talk?"grammar-elementsofstyle (1).jpg

[resister]

Psst: How about, "talk?"

Attachment 18820

Too pedestrian, one must sound cultured.

[Bethere]

Too pedestrian, one must sound cultured.

You'd flunk out of college so fast your head would spin.
download (4).png

[Ethereal]

You'd flunk out of college so fast your head would spin.
Attachment 18821

Sounds like Strunk was just ripping off George Orwell:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

[resister]

You'd flunk out of college so fast your head would spin.
Attachment 18821

Oh my gosh, bethere replied to me! My heart doth flutter much!