7 ms·

Minimal English (2018)

68 points by raldu 5y ago

WalterGR 5y ago
NSM, undefined in the article, appears to be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguag... “The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a linguistic theory that reduces lexicons down to a set of semantic primitives“
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  I wish these had been used as the basis for the set of emoji.
- andai 5y ago
  From the same website: "What is NSM" https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage/what-is-nsm https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/... >Assuming that reductive paraphrase can be made to work as a method of analysing meanings, it follows that every language has an irreducible "semantic core" which would be left after all the complex expressions had been dealt with. This semantic core must have a language-like structure, with a lexicon of indefinable expressions ("semantic primes") and a grammar, i.e. some principles governing how the lexical elements can be combined. The semantic primes and their principles of combination constitute a kind of "mini-language".
gmuslera 5y ago
My first thought when starting to read about this was xkcd's Thing Explainer. But will this carry all the meanings (including cultural ones) of those words to the translations to other languages ?
- addaon 5y ago
  Also simple English, which has a surprisingly complete wikipedia translation (https://simple.wikipedia.org/ https://simple.wikipedia.org/).
  - gumby 5y ago
    Yea, I was wondering what the differences were when I read this article. I hadn’t previously heard about Minimal English, while I had heard of Simple English.
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    There’s also ASD-STE100[1], a standard apparently for technical documentation and ATC communcation(?), though while it is designed to assist ESL learners, it probably doesn’t exactly count as simple from a native reading-level perspective. Also, this is the second[2] thread today that merits a mention of Steele’s Growing a language[3]! [1] https://asd-ste100.org/ https://asd-ste100.org/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481035 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481443
- Animats 5y ago
  No. Read "Orwell, the Lost Writings", in which he discusses his job during WWII - translating the BBC news into Simple English for broadcast to the Colonies (mostly India and Hong Kong). He discovered that translating to Simple English required pounding out any political nuances into plain language, and that doing so was itself a political act. That was the genesis of Newspeak in "1984".
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > My first thought when starting to read about this was xkcd's Thing Explainer. Mine too. Some links: https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457.pdf
raidicy 5y ago
I have studied Toki pona for a little while in the past. It's emphasis is on minimalism and context. Especially since the Lexicon is around 130 words. It sounds like things can be ambiguous, but once you get a hang of it communicating is pretty easy. In my opinion this allows you to learn the grammar and how to speak relatively easily( which is also helped by the fact that there are relatively few grammar Concepts) Further there is an offshoot of the community called Toki ma, where it's emphasis is on building on the Concepts that are from Toki pona and extending them to be more of an aux lang and to be more fledged out as to be able to discuss complicated Topics. With all that said, I really would like to see some sort of version of this for other languages. From my limited language learning it seems there's a huge learning curve in the beginning that can somewhat taper off after you get a good handle on a language's grammar. For example knowing definitively three to four hundred words you must know to be able to speak basic Japanese/Spanish/French etc, cuts down on your study requirements. There are of course arguments against this, but it seems like a cool idea.
- tillcarlos 5y ago
  If I would have “Minimal Vietnamese” - it would be a blessing. There are so many different words for the same thing (just like in English). learning vocabulary is the most difficult thing for me.
- cpeterso 5y ago
  > knowing definitively three to four hundred words you must know to be able to speak basic Japanese/Spanish/French etc, cuts down on your study requirements. I’ve read about various English subsets like Basic and Simple English, but are there examples of subsets for other languages? I haven’t found a Simple Spanish. A similar idea that intrigued me was books written using only monosyllabic words. There are about 7,500 English words with only one syllable. An example rewriting of Alice in Wonderland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland_Retold_in_Words_of_One_Syllable https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wond... Plus a number of books by Lucy Aikin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Aikin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Aikin
  - 5y ago
Naac 5y ago
Reading the paragraph about Galileo's telescope reminded me of Guy Steele's talk Growing a Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  It does have a similar feel, but IIUC, Minimal English is trying to be systematic about restricting itself to true primitives, as opposed to starting with all of the words that happen to be one syllable in English. I imagine one can compose many hard-to-translate expressions out of one-syllable words.
zackmorris 5y ago
Huh, I had never heard of this, but a quick search revealed a minimal English checker that works with the sample text in the article: https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/tools/CheckMinimalEnglish.html https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/tools/CheckMinimalEnglish.h... I couldn't find a minimal English translator online though. The closest are these for simple English, which I hadn't heard of either until addaon's comment here: https://www.simplish.org/conversion/F1618DD6/ https://www.simplish.org/conversion/F1618DD6/ https://www.online-utility.org/english/simple_basic_helper.jsp https://www.online-utility.org/english/simple_basic_helper.j... https://seotoolzz.com/article-simplifier.php https://seotoolzz.com/article-simplifier.php https://ds.gpii.net/learn/accessibility-masterlist/translate-text-simpler-language https://ds.gpii.net/learn/accessibility-masterlist/translate... I feel like if there was a semester class or certification to know how to convert one's language to minimal, and another to know how to convert between minimal languages, we'd be well on our way to being able to communicate with anyone. The alternative is to invent a language like Common in role playing games, and expect everyone to learn it. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work, as shown by Esperanto's lack of adoption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ To me, it looks a bit like the Spanish I know, but I can't really read it. Programmers have Lisp and the shell and assembly and SQL and even C-based languages like Javascript that they can fall back to when explaining something. It's been a long time since I looked at a piece of mainstream code and didn't immediately grok what it's generally doing. I feel like there's something to that. For example, I never had to "learn" PHP, because it stems from the context and metaphors used by the shell and C++. If you know how string interpolation works with "$var" and how associative arrays work with $array['dog'] = 'cat', then congratulations, you already mostly know PHP. But I never fully internalized how Ruby works, because it attempts to transcend the commonalities and be its own language, more like Perl maybe. I'm not quite saying that right, but maybe there's a term for that concept. Ruby might be more "expressive" than PHP, which can result in a steeper learning curve. So translating English to Japanese, for example, might be like Python to Ruby, but we'd be better off doing something like Python -> C <-> C++ -> Ruby. That way anyone who knew C or C++ could generally communicate with anyone. But we don't teach (or even have) those common basis languages for communication?
- 5y ago
mwcampbell 5y ago
> Another obstacle is that simple vocabulary is a turn-off for some people, no matter how elegantly it is used and regardless of the content. Sometimes it comes down to a fear of sounding “childish”. A related objection: I imagine that if I, as a native English speaker, were to speak to a non-native speaker in minimal English, it would seem patronizing. I wonder what the actual intended applications of this are.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  "it would seem patronizing" Unlikely. If anything, you will reduce the parsing load on the poor recipient. I'm a Brit who has an employee who is Polish. His grasp of English is phenomenal, in my estimation. Now let's bear in mind that Polish and English are very, very different. I can't even pronounce his family name properly but then to be fair, neither can he pronounce mine properly either. I deliberately use complex English idioms and language structures and Tom(asz) laps it up. It is quite obvious when I've gone too far because Tom asks me to clarify what on earth I've said. To my eternal shame, all I've managed is a few words in Polish. I can get by in French, I can survive in German, I can be laughed at in Dutch. I need to pull my finger out and get to grips with Slavic languages. English is a lingua franca ie French! Keep it simple but not too simple. If you are being condescending or patronising then that is not due to your choice of words.
- elless 5y ago
  Weirdly, it's the people producing the language that seem to have this hangup. The people we've surveyed who are reading and listening to it, love it.
segfaultbuserr 5y ago
It reminds me of ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English, widely used in aircraft technical documentation by Boeing and Airbus. For easier understanding by technicians, use of words are carefully controlled to reduce ambiguities. For example, instead of saying "before acceptance of unit, carry out the specified test procedure", you should write "before you accept the unit, you must do the specific test procedure." Also, the word "close" should only be used to mean "to move something to a position". Instead of writing "do not go close to the landing gear", one should write "do not go near the landing gear." It's a special-purpose language and not meant to be a general writing standard, but the basic idea is similar to this project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English
- gerdesj 5y ago
  That looks like a great idea. It roots out wooly thinking and ambiguity. English is rather ... flexible. This standard does not really "simplify" English but really "codify" it - the standard needs a better name! "before acceptance" vs "before you accept": These are quite subtly different. The first form really means passivity (something is done to you) and the second implies activity (I do something). Now, both forms are routinely used to mean the same thing but the second is correct in this case. "carry out" vs "you must do": the first form only implies who does what. The second form spells out exactly who does what. Alas, the standard will always lose out. Trying to pick English words with fewer meanings is always going to fail (tap - lol!) near vs close is not a useful distinction. Near can mean light years depending on context but close nearly always means within arm reach, a hair' breadth or whatever, except when it doesn't. I think a better approach would avoid words like "close" or "near" - they are subjective. "Do not approach to within 5m of the landing gear" is objective and easy to understand. A formal risk assessment should surely find the right distance. In many fields of Engineering, as soon as you find yourself using wooly mensuration terminology instead of clearly defined terms, you are probably gearing up for a funeral.
  - segfaultbuserr 5y ago
    > This standard does not really "simplify" English but really "codify" it - the standard needs a better name! It does "simplify" English by disallowing the use of difficult grammar. One should give instructions in active voice, with simple verb tenses, and avoid the use of present participles or gerunds. The codified dictionary also only uses a basic subset of English words, difficult vocabulary is avoided to increase legibility.
AA-BA-94-2A-56 5y ago
Many literature writers recommend using only the word `said` or `says`, depending on tense, to describe characters speaking. A few of them go as far as to recommend this quite strongly, even when words like 'gushed' or 'shouted' may more clearly reflect what the author is intending to say. This, I think, forces the writer to rely more on the semantics and subtext of what they are saying. A reader could infer, for example, that after waiting for hours in the queue, a customer at the DMV would be frustrated; using `they said in frustration` is redundant and telling rather than showing. It also forces the writer to describe some physical behaviour of their character that reflects emotion. Example: > "Please," Paul whimpered, "I don't want a fight." VS > "Please," Paul said, burying his shaking hands in his pockets, "I don't want a fight." The second sentence is better, because it allowed me to communicate that not only is Paul scared, but he is trying to hide it. He is acting brave-- which reveals something about how our character handles situations. Much of what good fiction writing hopes to achieve is illuminating a character's attributes in a way that seems to blend in with prose. --- My point is, by forcing a minimal style of writing, it actually forces the writer to think creatively. I have observed that creativity thrives with structure and rules, and rarely in absence of them.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Both sentences are perfectly fine, they have different meanings. I don't see why the second is inherently better at all. It has a different meaning, so if you wanted to characterise Paul with the first sentence but you used the second by accident you'd literally just not be conveying what you wanted.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  If English was more like Latin the "said" in the second sentence could be deleted all together and made implicit with declensions.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Example: >> "Please," Paul whimpered, "I don't want a fight." > VS >> "Please," Paul said, burying his shaking hands in his pockets, "I don't want a fight." > The second sentence is better ... Many of the same writers would say that "burying his shaking hands in his pockets" should also be omitted, and Paul's words and the context should convey it all. But few would say one style is objectively 'better', I think.
sbmthakur 5y ago
Does anyone know an "intermediate" version of this? I already have these words in my vocabulary and would like to expand it. I am not exactly looking for rare words. I am looking for words whose frequency in casual conversations matches with the words mentioned in this article. https://www.abc.net.au/education/learn-english/words-to-use-instead-of-very/13582094 https://www.abc.net.au/education/learn-english/words-to-use-...
- elless 5y ago
  Have a look at www.learnthesewordsfirst.com - dictionary built in layers based on this concept, going up to the Longman dictionary.
  - sbmthakur 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
I like the idea of minimal English, but you can't eliminate essential complexity, only push it around, like marbles under the carpet. It ends up like technical writing, where specific repeated phrases have specific meanings (I'm thinking legal writing and also Smith's The Wealth of Nations). Or Lisp written by Java programmers. Galileo looked at the stars not like other people looked at them before. Because of this, he could see them well, not like people could see them before. When he was looking at them, he was holding something of one kind near his eyes. When someone holds something of this kind near the eyes, this someone can look at some places very far from the place where this someone is. A thing of this kind is called “a telescope.” When Galileo looked at the sky at night like this, he could see some places very far from the Earth well. There are people who say "nay". I am one of those people. While recognizing its key goal of translatability, is it really true that many non-English languages lack abstract concepts? Sounds an anglo-centric proposition.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Other languages don't lack abstract concepts, but the abstract concepts are frequently more culturally or contextually dependent (and thus more difficult to reliably translate from one language to another) than concrete concepts. I can translate the word "exorbitant" to Spanish, but it's likely that the translation I pick in one context will be incorrect in another. On the other hand, my translation for 'cat' is likely to be reliable across a large range of contexts (barring its slang usage to represent an abstract concept). There's a reason that many loan words in English from other languages express concepts that are difficult to express naturally in English, e.g. 'schadenfreude', 'ennui'.
  - elless 5y ago
    Yep, exactly this.
  - hyperpallium2 5y ago
    I was thinking of the lack of conjunctions in the sample, which increases the complexity IMO - like a variable for each operator result in an algebraic expression, or CFG without BNF. It's needlessly tedious, it doesn't map to the concepts in mind - and I can't believe non-English speakers lack these mental concepts (nor that their languages lack them). And this line: [non-cross-translatable words]. These include key words of Anglo culture, such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘fair’ and ‘rude’, ‘fact’ and ‘evidence’. Like apple-eaters, do only English-speakers know right and wrong? I realize that that allusion itself imports the religous background of English; and I can believe that _precise_ definitions could vary between cultures - even legal systems differ in what "evidence" is permissible in court... but is the casual, non-technical meaning really that different between cultures? Or... am I just so immersed in English that its assumptions are transparent to me, like a fish who can't understand "out of water"? I guess I would like to see specifically how some of those 6 examples are non-cross-translatable...
hussainbilal 5y ago
Not the english my product manager needs, but the english they deserve. (Edit: Also, the english my code comments deserve) (Edit 2: and my commit messages)
mrichman 5y ago
Remind anyone else of Newspeak?
- dymk 5y ago
  What about it? References to 1984 with no context are so common and boring
asab 5y ago
persondothing.com is a guessing game version using only 36 words - fun to play with friends

68 points by raldu 5y ago

NSM, undefined in the article, appears to be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguag... “The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a linguistic theory that reduces lexicons down to a set of semantic primitives“

kybernetikos 5y ago
I wish these had been used as the basis for the set of emoji.
andai 5y ago
From the same website: "What is NSM" https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage/what-is-nsm https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/... >Assuming that reductive paraphrase can be made to work as a method of analysing meanings, it follows that every language has an irreducible "semantic core" which would be left after all the complex expressions had been dealt with. This semantic core must have a language-like structure, with a lexicon of indefinable expressions ("semantic primes") and a grammar, i.e. some principles governing how the lexical elements can be combined. The semantic primes and their principles of combination constitute a kind of "mini-language".

gmuslera 5y ago

My first thought when starting to read about this was xkcd's Thing Explainer. But will this carry all the meanings (including cultural ones) of those words to the translations to other languages ?

addaon 5y ago
Also simple English, which has a surprisingly complete wikipedia translation (https://simple.wikipedia.org/ https://simple.wikipedia.org/).
- gumby 5y ago
  Yea, I was wondering what the differences were when I read this article. I hadn’t previously heard about Minimal English, while I had heard of Simple English.
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  There’s also ASD-STE100[1], a standard apparently for technical documentation and ATC communcation(?), though while it is designed to assist ESL learners, it probably doesn’t exactly count as simple from a native reading-level perspective. Also, this is the second[2] thread today that merits a mention of Steele’s Growing a language[3]! [1] https://asd-ste100.org/ https://asd-ste100.org/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481035 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30481443
Animats 5y ago
No. Read "Orwell, the Lost Writings", in which he discusses his job during WWII - translating the BBC news into Simple English for broadcast to the Colonies (mostly India and Hong Kong). He discovered that translating to Simple English required pounding out any political nuances into plain language, and that doing so was itself a political act. That was the genesis of Newspeak in "1984".
CRConrad 5y ago
> My first thought when starting to read about this was xkcd's Thing Explainer. Mine too. Some links: https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457.pdf

raidicy 5y ago

I have studied Toki pona for a little while in the past. It's emphasis is on minimalism and context. Especially since the Lexicon is around 130 words. It sounds like things can be ambiguous, but once you get a hang of it communicating is pretty easy. In my opinion this allows you to learn the grammar and how to speak relatively easily( which is also helped by the fact that there are relatively few grammar Concepts) Further there is an offshoot of the community called Toki ma, where it's emphasis is on building on the Concepts that are from Toki pona and extending them to be more of an aux lang and to be more fledged out as to be able to discuss complicated Topics. With all that said, I really would like to see some sort of version of this for other languages. From my limited language learning it seems there's a huge learning curve in the beginning that can somewhat taper off after you get a good handle on a language's grammar. For example knowing definitively three to four hundred words you must know to be able to speak basic Japanese/Spanish/French etc, cuts down on your study requirements. There are of course arguments against this, but it seems like a cool idea.

tillcarlos 5y ago
If I would have “Minimal Vietnamese” - it would be a blessing. There are so many different words for the same thing (just like in English). learning vocabulary is the most difficult thing for me.
cpeterso 5y ago
> knowing definitively three to four hundred words you must know to be able to speak basic Japanese/Spanish/French etc, cuts down on your study requirements. I’ve read about various English subsets like Basic and Simple English, but are there examples of subsets for other languages? I haven’t found a Simple Spanish. A similar idea that intrigued me was books written using only monosyllabic words. There are about 7,500 English words with only one syllable. An example rewriting of Alice in Wonderland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland_Retold_in_Words_of_One_Syllable https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wond... Plus a number of books by Lucy Aikin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Aikin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Aikin
- 5y ago

Naac 5y ago

Reading the paragraph about Galileo's telescope reminded me of Guy Steele's talk Growing a Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0

mwcampbell 5y ago
It does have a similar feel, but IIUC, Minimal English is trying to be systematic about restricting itself to true primitives, as opposed to starting with all of the words that happen to be one syllable in English. I imagine one can compose many hard-to-translate expressions out of one-syllable words.

zackmorris 5y ago

Huh, I had never heard of this, but a quick search revealed a minimal English checker that works with the sample text in the article: https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/tools/CheckMinimalEnglish.html https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/tools/CheckMinimalEnglish.h... I couldn't find a minimal English translator online though. The closest are these for simple English, which I hadn't heard of either until addaon's comment here: https://www.simplish.org/conversion/F1618DD6/ https://www.simplish.org/conversion/F1618DD6/ https://www.online-utility.org/english/simple_basic_helper.jsp https://www.online-utility.org/english/simple_basic_helper.j... https://seotoolzz.com/article-simplifier.php https://seotoolzz.com/article-simplifier.php https://ds.gpii.net/learn/accessibility-masterlist/translate-text-simpler-language https://ds.gpii.net/learn/accessibility-masterlist/translate... I feel like if there was a semester class or certification to know how to convert one's language to minimal, and another to know how to convert between minimal languages, we'd be well on our way to being able to communicate with anyone. The alternative is to invent a language like Common in role playing games, and expect everyone to learn it. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work, as shown by Esperanto's lack of adoption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ To me, it looks a bit like the Spanish I know, but I can't really read it. Programmers have Lisp and the shell and assembly and SQL and even C-based languages like Javascript that they can fall back to when explaining something. It's been a long time since I looked at a piece of mainstream code and didn't immediately grok what it's generally doing. I feel like there's something to that. For example, I never had to "learn" PHP, because it stems from the context and metaphors used by the shell and C++. If you know how string interpolation works with "$var" and how associative arrays work with $array['dog'] = 'cat', then congratulations, you already mostly know PHP. But I never fully internalized how Ruby works, because it attempts to transcend the commonalities and be its own language, more like Perl maybe. I'm not quite saying that right, but maybe there's a term for that concept. Ruby might be more "expressive" than PHP, which can result in a steeper learning curve. So translating English to Japanese, for example, might be like Python to Ruby, but we'd be better off doing something like Python -> C <-> C++ -> Ruby. That way anyone who knew C or C++ could generally communicate with anyone. But we don't teach (or even have) those common basis languages for communication?

5y ago

mwcampbell 5y ago

> Another obstacle is that simple vocabulary is a turn-off for some people, no matter how elegantly it is used and regardless of the content. Sometimes it comes down to a fear of sounding “childish”. A related objection: I imagine that if I, as a native English speaker, were to speak to a non-native speaker in minimal English, it would seem patronizing. I wonder what the actual intended applications of this are.

gerdesj 5y ago
"it would seem patronizing" Unlikely. If anything, you will reduce the parsing load on the poor recipient. I'm a Brit who has an employee who is Polish. His grasp of English is phenomenal, in my estimation. Now let's bear in mind that Polish and English are very, very different. I can't even pronounce his family name properly but then to be fair, neither can he pronounce mine properly either. I deliberately use complex English idioms and language structures and Tom(asz) laps it up. It is quite obvious when I've gone too far because Tom asks me to clarify what on earth I've said. To my eternal shame, all I've managed is a few words in Polish. I can get by in French, I can survive in German, I can be laughed at in Dutch. I need to pull my finger out and get to grips with Slavic languages. English is a lingua franca ie French! Keep it simple but not too simple. If you are being condescending or patronising then that is not due to your choice of words.
elless 5y ago
Weirdly, it's the people producing the language that seem to have this hangup. The people we've surveyed who are reading and listening to it, love it.

segfaultbuserr 5y ago

It reminds me of ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English, widely used in aircraft technical documentation by Boeing and Airbus. For easier understanding by technicians, use of words are carefully controlled to reduce ambiguities. For example, instead of saying "before acceptance of unit, carry out the specified test procedure", you should write "before you accept the unit, you must do the specific test procedure." Also, the word "close" should only be used to mean "to move something to a position". Instead of writing "do not go close to the landing gear", one should write "do not go near the landing gear." It's a special-purpose language and not meant to be a general writing standard, but the basic idea is similar to this project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English

gerdesj 5y ago
That looks like a great idea. It roots out wooly thinking and ambiguity. English is rather ... flexible. This standard does not really "simplify" English but really "codify" it - the standard needs a better name! "before acceptance" vs "before you accept": These are quite subtly different. The first form really means passivity (something is done to you) and the second implies activity (I do something). Now, both forms are routinely used to mean the same thing but the second is correct in this case. "carry out" vs "you must do": the first form only implies who does what. The second form spells out exactly who does what. Alas, the standard will always lose out. Trying to pick English words with fewer meanings is always going to fail (tap - lol!) near vs close is not a useful distinction. Near can mean light years depending on context but close nearly always means within arm reach, a hair' breadth or whatever, except when it doesn't. I think a better approach would avoid words like "close" or "near" - they are subjective. "Do not approach to within 5m of the landing gear" is objective and easy to understand. A formal risk assessment should surely find the right distance. In many fields of Engineering, as soon as you find yourself using wooly mensuration terminology instead of clearly defined terms, you are probably gearing up for a funeral.
- segfaultbuserr 5y ago
  > This standard does not really "simplify" English but really "codify" it - the standard needs a better name! It does "simplify" English by disallowing the use of difficult grammar. One should give instructions in active voice, with simple verb tenses, and avoid the use of present participles or gerunds. The codified dictionary also only uses a basic subset of English words, difficult vocabulary is avoided to increase legibility.

AA-BA-94-2A-56 5y ago

Many literature writers recommend using only the word `said` or `says`, depending on tense, to describe characters speaking. A few of them go as far as to recommend this quite strongly, even when words like 'gushed' or 'shouted' may more clearly reflect what the author is intending to say. This, I think, forces the writer to rely more on the semantics and subtext of what they are saying. A reader could infer, for example, that after waiting for hours in the queue, a customer at the DMV would be frustrated; using `they said in frustration` is redundant and telling rather than showing. It also forces the writer to describe some physical behaviour of their character that reflects emotion. Example: > "Please," Paul whimpered, "I don't want a fight." VS > "Please," Paul said, burying his shaking hands in his pockets, "I don't want a fight." The second sentence is better, because it allowed me to communicate that not only is Paul scared, but he is trying to hide it. He is acting brave-- which reveals something about how our character handles situations. Much of what good fiction writing hopes to achieve is illuminating a character's attributes in a way that seems to blend in with prose. --- My point is, by forcing a minimal style of writing, it actually forces the writer to think creatively. I have observed that creativity thrives with structure and rules, and rarely in absence of them.

bigDinosaur 5y ago
Both sentences are perfectly fine, they have different meanings. I don't see why the second is inherently better at all. It has a different meaning, so if you wanted to characterise Paul with the first sentence but you used the second by accident you'd literally just not be conveying what you wanted.
morpheos137 5y ago
If English was more like Latin the "said" in the second sentence could be deleted all together and made implicit with declensions.
wolverine876 5y ago
Example: >> "Please," Paul whimpered, "I don't want a fight." > VS >> "Please," Paul said, burying his shaking hands in his pockets, "I don't want a fight." > The second sentence is better ... Many of the same writers would say that "burying his shaking hands in his pockets" should also be omitted, and Paul's words and the context should convey it all. But few would say one style is objectively 'better', I think.

sbmthakur 5y ago

Does anyone know an "intermediate" version of this? I already have these words in my vocabulary and would like to expand it. I am not exactly looking for rare words. I am looking for words whose frequency in casual conversations matches with the words mentioned in this article. https://www.abc.net.au/education/learn-english/words-to-use-instead-of-very/13582094 https://www.abc.net.au/education/learn-english/words-to-use-...

elless 5y ago
Have a look at www.learnthesewordsfirst.com - dictionary built in layers based on this concept, going up to the Longman dictionary.
- sbmthakur 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

I like the idea of minimal English, but you can't eliminate essential complexity, only push it around, like marbles under the carpet. It ends up like technical writing, where specific repeated phrases have specific meanings (I'm thinking legal writing and also Smith's The Wealth of Nations). Or Lisp written by Java programmers. Galileo looked at the stars not like other people looked at them before. Because of this, he could see them well, not like people could see them before. When he was looking at them, he was holding something of one kind near his eyes. When someone holds something of this kind near the eyes, this someone can look at some places very far from the place where this someone is. A thing of this kind is called “a telescope.” When Galileo looked at the sky at night like this, he could see some places very far from the Earth well. There are people who say "nay". I am one of those people. While recognizing its key goal of translatability, is it really true that many non-English languages lack abstract concepts? Sounds an anglo-centric proposition.

InitialLastName 5y ago
Other languages don't lack abstract concepts, but the abstract concepts are frequently more culturally or contextually dependent (and thus more difficult to reliably translate from one language to another) than concrete concepts. I can translate the word "exorbitant" to Spanish, but it's likely that the translation I pick in one context will be incorrect in another. On the other hand, my translation for 'cat' is likely to be reliable across a large range of contexts (barring its slang usage to represent an abstract concept). There's a reason that many loan words in English from other languages express concepts that are difficult to express naturally in English, e.g. 'schadenfreude', 'ennui'.
- elless 5y ago
  Yep, exactly this.
- hyperpallium2 5y ago
  I was thinking of the lack of conjunctions in the sample, which increases the complexity IMO - like a variable for each operator result in an algebraic expression, or CFG without BNF. It's needlessly tedious, it doesn't map to the concepts in mind - and I can't believe non-English speakers lack these mental concepts (nor that their languages lack them). And this line: [non-cross-translatable words]. These include key words of Anglo culture, such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘fair’ and ‘rude’, ‘fact’ and ‘evidence’. Like apple-eaters, do only English-speakers know right and wrong? I realize that that allusion itself imports the religous background of English; and I can believe that _precise_ definitions could vary between cultures - even legal systems differ in what "evidence" is permissible in court... but is the casual, non-technical meaning really that different between cultures? Or... am I just so immersed in English that its assumptions are transparent to me, like a fish who can't understand "out of water"? I guess I would like to see specifically how some of those 6 examples are non-cross-translatable...

hussainbilal 5y ago

Not the english my product manager needs, but the english they deserve. (Edit: Also, the english my code comments deserve) (Edit 2: and my commit messages)

mrichman 5y ago

Remind anyone else of Newspeak?

dymk 5y ago
What about it? References to 1984 with no context are so common and boring

asab 5y ago

persondothing.com is a guessing game version using only 36 words - fun to play with friends