4 ms·

I'm finding the writing style of this article very strange. Is the author pulling some trick that other linguists would find amusing?

combatentropy 9y ago
In at least some of his sentences, he tries to mix in words from different origins. From the article: "To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French and Latin." Also, this is not the first time I've heard someone on Hacker News say a literary article was hard to read. Even when they aren't trying to prove a point, people who swim in literature every day tend to sound like the literature that they read. They also sound like their colleagues, as they read a lot of their articles. They write differently than people who majored in one of the sciences, who in turn write differently than business majors --- naturally. English majors delight in words and are at play when they write --- naturally. They majored in it, didn't they? So their writing will have a wider variety of words, they will inject subtle poetic traits even in prose (metaphor, alliteration, etc.) and they will choose and arrange words based on how it sounds. They remember that even when reading silently, you still hear all the words in your head. So they will try to make it sing. Some do it subtly and well. You don't notice anything but that it was a nice read. Other writers are more heavy-handed and obnoxious about it. I was an English minor and feel at home reading this kind of stuff. I miss it, actually.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  > Also, this is not the first time I've heard someone on Hacker News say a literary article was hard to read. Switching between computer code and natural language is a major context switch. EDIT: I mean, look at the dumb sentence I just wrote. "Switch [...] switch." (sigh) Need to go back to the damn Vault config files.

combatentropy 9y ago

In at least some of his sentences, he tries to mix in words from different origins. From the article: "To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French and Latin." Also, this is not the first time I've heard someone on Hacker News say a literary article was hard to read. Even when they aren't trying to prove a point, people who swim in literature every day tend to sound like the literature that they read. They also sound like their colleagues, as they read a lot of their articles. They write differently than people who majored in one of the sciences, who in turn write differently than business majors --- naturally. English majors delight in words and are at play when they write --- naturally. They majored in it, didn't they? So their writing will have a wider variety of words, they will inject subtle poetic traits even in prose (metaphor, alliteration, etc.) and they will choose and arrange words based on how it sounds. They remember that even when reading silently, you still hear all the words in your head. So they will try to make it sing. Some do it subtly and well. You don't notice anything but that it was a nice read. Other writers are more heavy-handed and obnoxious about it. I was an English minor and feel at home reading this kind of stuff. I miss it, actually.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> Also, this is not the first time I've heard someone on Hacker News say a literary article was hard to read. Switching between computer code and natural language is a major context switch. EDIT: I mean, look at the dumb sentence I just wrote. "Switch [...] switch." (sigh) Need to go back to the damn Vault config files.