3 ms·

Wouldn't that international english be the same simple english (e.g., https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)?

• accidentallfact 8mo ago
  I believe that this goes beyond vocabulary. It's more about who bears the burden in communication - in most cultures, it's the speaker, who is supposed to communicate clearly, and concisely. In western culture, it's the listener, who is expected to decipher whatever the speaker is talking about.
  • tdeck 8mo ago
    > In most cultures, it's the speaker, who is supposed to communicate clearly, and concisely. In western culture, it's the listener, who is expected to decipher whatever the speaker is talking about. If you said this in Japanese, I'd say something like "Hmm, that seems a bit...". And you'd be expected to figure out what the rest of the sentence was. To be more clear, I don't think the generalization you're making is valid. My experience of non-"Western" cultural communication styles has not at all been uniformly more direct and clear. I think some subcultures in the US have an annoying habit of doing what you describe (e.g. "if you can't follow this you must be dumb" kind of mentality) but many others do not.