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Am I the only one to find that using only the 1,000 most common words actually makes thing harder to understand? The writer ends up having to use convoluted par
by gregschlom 11y ago
Am I the only one to find that using only the 1,000 most common words actually makes thing harder to understand? The writer ends up having to use convoluted paraphrases to refer to things where a precise, well defined and well understood word exists but it's not part of the top 1,000.
- cloudhead 11y agoYou're not the only one. Words exist exactly to avoid the problem this app creates..
- tim333 11y agoCould be handy for non native English speakers though - less to learn.
- jonathankoren 11y agoI seriously doubt it, who wants to sound like a very stupid child? This is more of an XKCD fan boy project. So let's look at a famous XKCD comic using this, "US Space Team's Up Goer Five". "US Space Team" barely makes sense, does more to obscure than illuminate, and "Up Goer Five" makes no sense at all.
- meric 11y ago"stupid" = depends on the age. Unless you meant all children are stupid....
- jonathankoren 11y agoI meant a 5 year old on the left side of the bell curve of all all 5 year olds.
- jrockway 11y agoI have to disagree with you. First off, there are many dimensions to reading new languages. Nobody is saying "learn 1000 words of English and you're done for life". Rather, achieve fluency in a subset, then work on becoming more idiomatic. If you're lost somewhere and need help, nobody cares that you sound like a stupid child. (They probably won't notice, though. I've found through learning other languages that rare words are actually very rare and of extremely limited use. Obviously if someone uses it and you don't know it, you're stuck. But you can get by without it.) US Space Team tells you what NASA does. NASA on its own tells you nothing about what they do, for all you know it could be the National Agricultural Sabotage Administration, and their goal is to blow up farms. You have to separate language out into the multiple dimensions that it encompasses in order to understand certain aspects. It's clear to me that you use language as a social signalling method, "that person doesn't know what NASA is, hah, they're dumb and I won't associate with them as a result." That's fine, but there is another aspect: explaining ideas. And that can be done with less than the full set of all English words.
- sremani 11y agoThis is the problem with intelligentsia, they want to sound intelligent, using "heavy hitter" words. What about the intelligent person who is non-native speaker? This association of English fluency with Intelligence has ruined untold number of careers in the world, esp. in countries where English is official but non-native language. I welcome simplified English in every shape or form, from limiting words to changing spellings and streamline it. Its no more language of people from England, every one in the world has stake in it. English reformation is long over due.
- WalterBright 11y ago> This is the problem with intelligentsia, they want to sound intelligent, using "heavy hitter" words. Some people insert heavy hitter words into their speech in order to sound more intelligent. It comes across as unnatural and awkward, though. But people who have acquired large vocabularies organically, by being around people who talk that way or by reading a lot, use it naturally and unthinkingly. And then there are authors and such who use language like a painter uses color. English is a very rich language, and if you want to paint a rich scene with words, there is quite a palette to choose from. Would you tell a painter he can only use primary colors?
- jonathankoren 11y agoThere's a huge difference between using the correct word, and using a proverbia 10 dollar word. Limiting yourself to the "ten hundred" most common words is just limiting. You can't even say you're hurt.[0] [0] http://www.esldesk.com/vocabulary/words http://www.esldesk.com/vocabulary/words
- flashman 11y agoBut "you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today" is one of the funniest understatements I've ever read.
- berns 11y agoThe very popular Oxford Learner's Dictionary uses a limited vocabulary of 3 500 words for its definitions.
- cpeterso 11y agoThe "Simple English" version of Wikipedia uses the Basic English 2000 and Voice of America's Special English 1500 word list: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia
- koenigdavidmj 11y agoEven so, you still really have to know the idiomatic phrases, which can be considered as separate semantic units. Just because you know what "follow" and "up" are doesn't mean that you know what it means to "follow up".
- Semiapies 11y agoYes, the use of idioms and slang is basically a cheat around the thousand-word limit of Basic English by writers trying to use it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- AndrewUnmuted 11y agoThe technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/how-trump-speak-has-pushed-the-donald-into-first-place/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/ho... > Some of his answers last only a few seconds, some are slightly longer, but almost all consist of simple sentences, grammatically and conceptually, and most of them withhold their most important word or phrase until the very end. Trump’s sentences end with a pop, and he seems to know instinctively where to put the emphasis in each one.
- consum3dbyfire 11y agoLooks like the creator picked up on that, as well: https://medium.com/@mortenjust/i-doomed-mankind-with-a-free-text-editor-ba6003319681#.d80lnwnac https://medium.com/@mortenjust/i-doomed-mankind-with-a-free-...
- Semiapies 11y agoI'd say anyone who says he's made a language/special vocabulary/style guide/editor that "makes it hard to write bullshit" really hasn't picked up on that.
- matwood 11y agoSounds tremendous!
- gertef 11y agoTrump does not limit himself to anything like the most common 1000 worrds
- briandear 11y agoProbably just the top 25.
- phaedryx 11y agohttp://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-trump-and-ben-carson-speak-grade-school-level-that-today-voters-can-quickly-grasp/LUCBY6uwQAxiLvvXbVTSUN/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-t... He does use very simple words.
- hackbinary 11y agoMaybe the author is just out by an order of magnitude? Maybe it should be 10,000 words?
- Retra 11y agoMaybe it should be the 1000 least ambiguous words.
- iamcurious 11y agoI suspect that a list of the least ambiguous words would be made entirely of numbers.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoCouple. Trio. Threesome. Still room for ambiguity!
- Semiapies 11y agoThat and extremely technical terms.
- kazinator 11y agoWith just the words "zero" and "one" strung together in some combination, we can describe a JPEG image, which can be a picture of anything. (For instance, a black and white scan of the word "deoxyribonucleic" in a Times Roman font).
- webkike 11y agoThe ability to describe anything says nothing about the clarity of the description
- erelde 11y agoWhile playing the devil's advocate, I could argue that the description using only 0 and 1 is more precise than the phrase "It's a picture of a white cliff on the shore of the sea, possibly in the south of England, in the foreground there's the silhouette of a man or woman to small to distinguish clearly at the bottom of the cliff, the sky above the cliff is bright blue with a few trailing clouds etc etc etc etc etc". But we're not really talking about the description of a picture, we're in fact talking about political discourse.
- pdabbadabba 11y agoI agree with you, but clarity is not the same thing as precision.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- CocaKoala 11y agoLet's play a game; I'll describe a scene to you, and you need to make a drawing of the scene based on the description. The closer your drawing is to the scene I'm describing (for some agreeable metric of 'closer'), the more money you win. Now, do you want me to recite a bunch of ones and zeros? Or would you rather I say, "It's a picture of a white cliff on the shore of the sea, possibly in the south of England; in the foreground there's a person's silhouette, too small to pick out their gender..."? If, as you say, you could argue that the ones and zeros makes for a more precise description, then obviously you would prefer that option, yes?
- bovermyer 11y agoDirectly relevant: Toki Pona, a language with 123 (ish) words. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-p...
- skybrian 11y agoSure, but it's a fun writing exercise. If you write using a limited vocabulary and then fix the most convoluted paraphrases, you might end up in a better place than if you wrote it normally.
- filmgirlcw 11y agoWhich is sort of the joke. But yes, this is absolutely correct. Moreover, as with any language, the way to get better is to use it more/get more exposed to more parts of it.
- MaysonL 11y agoWhich is the joke. Absolutely correct. And – as with any language – the way to improve is to use it. To paraphrase and copy-edit your perceptive comment. (The subject made me do it).
- filmgirlcw 11y agoWell played.
- lolidaisuki 11y agoI think it would be nice if you could use only the x most common words and if you want to use any other terms you have to define them. After defining them in the article you could use them freely in that article.
- wang_li 11y agoYou are correct. Lectern v. podium. When we have specific words for things, we should use them. Moving down a step in specificity is not conducive to clarity.
- awjr 11y agoI personally use http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ when I think I've gone a bit lazy in the way I have written an article.
- oaktowner 11y agoI had forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder!
- huac 11y agoHuh, I usually only associate Hemingway with "write drunk edit sober."
- ottumm 11y agoYou should read more Hemingway.
- billhendricksjr 11y agoGreat tool
- readams 11y agoI think a much better approach would be to start with the 1000 most common words, but allow defining terms from there. This allows you to develop the correct jargon which will both enhance understanding and allow communication with others about the topic in the future. Having to continually fall back on silly terms like "up goer" does nothing to enhance understanding when you can define what a rocket is and then just use the word rocket.
- r00fus 11y agoBingo - let users extend lingo and use crowd-sourced/maintained lingo/lexicon files. It'd be absolutely awesome if these lexicon files evolved organically and were public over time to graph how language progresses...
- deckar01 11y agoIf this colored or underlined words past the 1000 rank, instead of removing them, it would be less offensive to my sensibilities.
- SixSigma 11y agoAmusing coincidence that readams above used "up goer", as the "up goer" editor does what you suggest : http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
- aparadja 11y agoThat's actually a nice implementation. It's much easier to fix errors after finishing a sentence than it is to fear every word you type. Here's my attempt to describe compilers, which ended up going a little off-track: ---- If you want to make new things for a computer, you first have to write them down in a way that a computer can understand. You have to use strange computer words, not normal human words. People usually only talk to other people, so talking to a computer using only computer words is very hard. To make it easier, there are things that take human words and then write them out as computer words so you don't have to do it yourself. Those things were made by people who went to school for a long time. To make them, they had to know all the human words and all the computer words too. Thanks to them, you can write stuff that feels pretty normal to you, and still be able to make new things for a computer. It's still a little bit hard, but you can learn the simple stuff in a few days. A long time ago, only a few people could build new things for computers. But today, many people like you and me build them for money or just for fun on their free time. Just imagine: you could build a whole new thing today. A thing that no one ever had before. And if the thing you build actually helps other people, you can get a lot of money for it. That's what many of us in the "Thing Building News" place do. We go there to share stories about the things we build. I now want to thank the people who went to school for a long time and made the things that turn human words into computer words. They help us do easy and fun stuff for money.
- jdavis703 11y agoGenuine question: have you ever tried to learn a foreign language? At least for me long sentences, with easier, more common, words are easier to understand.
- theonemind 11y agoI tried this, and very quickly found that out. Thereafter, I considered very carefully whether any word that wasn't in the most common 1,000 was worth introducing, and used the top 1,000 freely. That ended up working pretty well. When I found a word that really helped, I added it to the list of words I could continue to use for what I was writing.
- swiley 11y agoIt's kind of like "limit" and "dx/dy" in calculus compared to the crazy long prose people in ancient times had to write.
- Spooky23 11y agoBeing able to express and understand complex concepts is the difference between "smart" and "dumb", educated and uneducated. An average 4 year old in extreme poverty or public care has 10M words directed at him. A 4 year old with professional parents hears 50M. That's a key differentiator that drives future potential. Many people lack sophisticated literacy for a variety of reasons. When Honda opened a factory in Alabama, they changed written assembly instructions into pictograms due to the poor literacy level. In aviation, documentation is written in "simplified technical English" to assist non-native English speakers.
- dredmorbius 11y agoYou're not, and you beat me to writing the same comment by 10 hours. Writing is the problem of communicating ideas, and doing to to a sufficiently prepared audience, effectively. The problem with stunts such as this -- and there are others, the "if you stop writing for 5 seconds your text starts disappearing" demo a few weeks back comes to mind -- is that they confuse the medium with the message. Yes, it's possible to have confusing writing on account of unfamiliar terminology. That's a frequent problem with many Wikipedia articles, or much academic writing of the past few decades (older works -- say, 1950 and prior, to the 18th or even 17th century -- are often far clearer). But the problem most often isn't just the vocabulary, it's the structure of the writing. Pop open a book of Darwin or Adam Smith (I've been reading both) and turn to a random page. Once you get over a slight old fashionedness of the writing, the thoughts are clear. It is impossible to tell a narrative clearly if you've not organised your own thinking about it. I've been doing a lot of thinking ... well, about a lot of things. One of those topics is of data and narrative, and the difference between a dry factual presentation (say, a data table, or a simple list of events) and a story which weaves these into a consistent whole. Our minds typically work very well with narrative, sometimes too well, as false narratives can be constructed. But the best presentations I've encountered include both solid facts and a story which ties them together. Finding an author who does this well and with skill is truly impressive. And the good ones expand your vocabulary. Another point, and one to keep in mind. There's also Einstein's dictum: make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. The same applies to language.
- OJFord 11y agoI thought the same thing when it was done (or was it 10k?) for _Things Explained_ by 'the XKCD guy'. Great idea, needs more words. It's too extreme. In the case of this editor, it may actually be useful to some if `N` were configurable, and maybe exceptions could be added. (If you're writing an OS X user guide say, you want to be able to write 'OS X'!)
- Kaius 11y agoExactly! There is a phrase in Thing Explainer where Randall is trying to say that a part of a space shuttle or something is made in Japan, instead of using 'Japan' he has to say something like "the land where the sun comes up" or close to it (I don't think he could use 'rising' but may be not be recalling correctly). It breaks down as soon as you try to convey something beyond base level understanding. So yes, it sounds like using the most common 1K words would aid readability but you probably need to raise that to 2.5K or more. Low enough to avoid the use of complex words while also freeing the author from awkward phrasings.