Plus One

I was talking to Manny about downers, as you do, and the communication gap inherent in their disability. Downers don't talk like normal people and it's really annoying. It's hard to understand what they're saying even if you listen real careful. They kind of half say words and sometimes they mumble and stuff and sometimes they just can't say what they're trying to say. I feel bad continually asking someone to repeat themselves so I just nod and smile.

It made me think, do downers understand each other? Is it easier talking to each other than talking to real people or is the communication gap too deep for them to bother? Do they have some kind of downer telepathy? But I've seen groups of downers be all friendly with each other yammering away, maybe downers understand each other because they speak the same language. Maybe downers have their own language and that's why they suck at english so much, they're trying to speak to us real folk in a form of downs-syndrome pigeon-english. I guess that would make the language they use between each other fluent down speak.

I think this is where the phrase "to talk down to someone" comes from. You're essentially dumbing down the language to a level that a downer could understand.