The Secret Language of Men

The numbers say it all: In studies, women speak an average of 20,000 words a day. Men speak an average of 7,000. And we waste a lot of those words on meaningless chitchat with cabbies, talking sports with coworkers, and making small talk with the IT guy in the men's room.

"Cold out there, ay?"

"Sure is."

"Have a good one."

"Later, dude."

While it's clear that women are the talkers of most relationships (only 29 percent of men admit doing more), this doesn't mean men always have their own mute buttons pressed. Even men of few words communicate a great deal; we just speak more code than a CIA operative. Though our common comments can seem superficial, there's plenty of hidden meaning behind what men do talk about. Here, some translations ...

Guy Speak: Stats, Stats and More Stats

At cocktail parties, it may be easy to open with the weather conditions or appetizer quality, but anytime men--strangers or friends--are grouped together, men turn to sports. It's the universal language that men can use until they find other common ground. Besides the fact that we spend so much time watching them, sports also acts as our way to bond with other guys--without having to worry about differences in culture, education, or careers. Sports is a way for naturally aggressive, instinctively protective men to soften each other up--using Ronaldo, Kimi Raikonen, and the game result of the FA Cup final game.

Guy Speak: Movie lines

You talking to me? He's not sure you can handle the truth, so it seems like what we've got here is a failure to communicate. Frankly, my dear, he doesn't give a damn that you don't like that he quotes movies. Why? Because using movie lines means he can convey any emotion at any time without ever having to do it himself. They allow him to be confrontational ("Houston, we have a problem"), angry ("go ahead, make my day"), romantic ("you had me at the ... red lingerie"), and anything in between without having to actually break his steely exterior. Hoo-ah!

Guy Speak: Did you see the booty on that one?

Extensive and scientifically conducted research at a vast array of prestigious foundations and universities has revealed this shocking truth: Men love sex. And men actually love talking about sex, and naked bodies, and clothed bodies that would look great naked, and the top-five celebrities we occasionally fantasize about. But unlike many women--whose coworkers often know more about their sex lives than their husbands do--few men will ever utter a word about the woman they're currently committed to. (One reason is that we know it's hard to earn a woman's trust and we don't want to blow it. The other reason is that once a couple is committed, our buds just really don't want to hear about it. Plus, we're protective of the relationship.) Still, talking about hypothetical sexual situations or the lovely woman who just passed in front of us serves as a good way (albeit not the best) to release some testosterone.

Guy Speak: Trash-talking

Oh, give us the chance, and we'll jab and hook and right-cross our friends with jokes about their weight, their hair, their idiocy in relationships, their mother, their golf swing, anything really. While trash-talking and insult-flinging certainly comes from our competitive genetics, there's another reason why we're always slinging mental mud, especially to our closest friends. In lots of ways, humor sits high on a man's pedestal (it's one of the reasons why we're addicted to SportsCenter and Animal House), and the better we use it, the higher we feel we rank in our bud's coolness meter. As one expert told Men's Health, "Making your friends laugh is a way of being in control, and it distracts from being made fun of yourself."