Guy Steele used the restriction to one-syllable words to make a point. It's supposed to sound a bit off and it pushes him to define a bunch of words as he goes

Guy Steele used the restriction to one-syllable words to make a point. It's supposed to sound a bit off and it pushes him to define a bunch of words as he goes along. If he had started with "simple" words instead, the talk would have flowed too well for the gimmick to work! He actually mentions that in his talk: > In truth, the words of one syllable form quite a rich vocabulary, with which you can say many things. You may note that this vocabulary is much larger than that of the language called Basic English, defined by Charles Kay Ogden in the year one nine three nought[10]. I chose not to use Basic English for this talk, for the cause that Basic English has many words of two or more syllables, some of them quite long, handed down to us from the dim past of Rome. While Basic English has fewer words, it does not give the feel, to one who speaks full English, of being a small language. Using one-syllable words is a fun way to make the structure of the talk reflect its thesis, with a rule that's simple enough to explain in one sentence. It's not meant to be a serious example of a simple language! If you did it seriously you'd get something like Simple Wikipedia, which reads pretty well[1]: > A programming language is a type of written language that tells computers what to do. Examples are: python, ruby, jupiter, html, css, java, javascript, C, C++, and C#. Programming languages are used to write all computer programs and computer software. A programming language is like a set of instructions that the computer follows to do something. That reads well and it's a good example of defining specialized words as you need them, but it doesn't feel all that different from "normal" English and it's much harder to explain what "simple" constitutes in that context. It works better in reality, but worse for a talk. [1]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language