Re: Word of the Year


"Jim Lawton" <usenet1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pfedr1l2u45klm39r76vrlh7r8lkkfsoe4@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 16:11:14 GMT, "Chess One" <innes8@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Interesting list. I observe very simple and useful words in English are
>>unknown, avoided or misused, including simple 3- and 4-letter ones such
>>as;
>>apt, wen, nous, flip, nice
>
> I don't think you can say that about English as a language. If you were to
> direct your comment at American politicians or British businessmen, you
> might
> have a case.
>
>>
>>though non-native English speakers, mostly European contintental
>>correspondents, use them since presumably they find them in their
>>dictionaries, and prefer them to more ostentatious expressions, which are
>>no
>>more exact.
>
> Are you saying that there are shorter words which might replacer the ones
> in the
> list? Tell us what they are.

just to take the first, apt is usually a good replacement for appropriate or
apposite, similarly 'fit' serves as well for aptitude, and is a preferecne
to use 1 syllable instead of 4, and to the last which addresses misuse, nice
instead of precise, not instead of pleasant.

> Your list of short words contains none with which I am not entirley
> familiar. If
> you are not a native speaker of English and you find other foreigner's
> English
> easier to understand than that of mother-tongue speakers,

sorry, I didn't indicate either condition; I am a native speaker, and
indicated another quality of ESL speaker's usage - indeed, that is often
more apt to observe the niceties.

> that probably only
> means that you are not completely fluent. It was certainly my experience
> when I
> lived in Finland that I understood the circumscribed Finnish of foreigners
> easier to cope with than the rapid fire full-blooded native delivery.

i still owe you a moor

Phil

> Jim
> --
> a Yorkshire polymoth


.

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