Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

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To me, language is wielded with dual intention: (1) to convey meaning ("A thorough lecturer") & (2) to convey meaning in a pleasing manner to the listener ("A good lecturer").

Expanding vocabulary to accentuate (2) by necessity compromises (1) for classes of listeners / readers who are not familiar with that vocabulary superset. Which decomposes the optimization problem to "Who is my audience and what is their comfort vocabulary set?" I would expect it's >1,000 words even for ESOL listeners. However, it's certainly < "the full set of florid English words".

And furthermore, I think English writers writing for English consumers (I count myself among these, sadly) often undervalue writing in the most effective style for the widest audience when applicable (and nowadays it almost always is: research papers, comments on a public forum, blog posts, how to's, etc etc).

Does anyone have any links to courses to help develop a working minimally spanning English vocabulary for international technical communication?

This is one problem I've had with academic literature in historically liberal arts fields. "Just learn the obscure English vocabulary (before you can understand, work, or research in a field)" is a ridiculous bar to set in front of contributions.

It's

1. Convey meaning

2. Establish social/tribal register - which can be done in inclusive (welcoming) or exclusive (aggressive) ways.

I think elegant, beautiful English peaked in the 1950s. I have a small collection of books from that period about various topics. They're all written in an effortlessly understated and unaffected English style that seems to have vanished now.

George Orwell's essays have some of the same quality.

At the other extreme, academic arts literature can be particularly bad, because the wilder fringes of (e.g.) critical theory seem to have developed a cargo cult vocabulary that primarily exists for social signalling, not for communication - while, ironically, spending a lot of time discussing social signalling.

When it's so easy to hack together an academic paper generator [1][2] and no one is much the wiser, it's clear that communication is no longer the point.

[1] http://bocktherobber.com/2010/05/post-modernism-generator/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26...

Rare words can make writing more efficient and enjoyable. But it doesn't always.

To my ears:

"I use language for two reasons:"

Is better than

"To me, language is wielded with dual intention"

But I always enjoy the word "florid", even though it's not in the top 1000 words.

Indeed. Efficient use of language can be far more compelling than florid prose. Of course, it can also be more difficult to convey the same meaning tersely, hence the old quote (who's source I forget, and I'm likely mangling) "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one".

It's Blaise Pascal: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal#Quotes

> "To me, language is wielded with dual intention"

I've got to be honest. I actually prefer that one. Not for conveying meaning but it definitely sounds nicer -- as a though it were a part of a Shakespearean soliloquy.

I believe that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about words I put on the internet.

Which of those I'd use would be dependant on the situation. If I'm trying to convey a tone of militant anger or something similar, I'd go with the latter.

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