> Nobody talks like this. > I have to translate it But you have to distinguish active and passive vocabulary. Words you commonly use and words you understand

> Nobody talks like this. > I have to translate it But you have to distinguish active and passive vocabulary. Words you commonly use and words you understand when others use them. And you also have to distinguish between written and spoken language. E.g. nobody would actually say "exempli gratia" but it's commonly used in writing. English is not my mother tongue and for me it mostly falls into passive vocabulary, but it is perfectly understandable. I don't have to mentally translate the whole sentence into simpler words before being able to grasp its meaning. And it's not like those words are obscure, they are just place 2 or 3 of most common uses among their respective set of synonyms.