I was at a Central Europe meetup earlier this year, which was also attended by Norwegians, Finns and Kuwaitis. At one point a speaker from Ukraine paused in her prepared speech to observe, “We are all very clever people, but we speak to each other as children.” I took her point, that in this wonderful mix of nationalities and cultures, there was only one common language – English. The same applies to all the many and varied other users of the Internet, and of the cryptoworld – English rules supreme. There are rare times when a coin offering may be so region-specific that the ‘home language’ may be used, but even then, you can be sure that there’ll be a drop-down English button.
It might not have been like this: We could have been using Steve Job’s mother-tongue, Arabic, or one of the languages of Bill Gates’ ancestors, German. But instead we speak to each other in English, “as children.”
Now in some ways this is a really positive thing because it should ensure two very important qualities: Simplicity and Clarity. Native English speakers always make things fancy and more complex than they need to, whereas someone using English as a second language has to keep it simple. The native speaker may Request a caffeinated hot beverage, while everyone else says Gimme coffee! Let’s not get confused by the name English though – what we all speak and write is actually American.
And in case you think that all native American speakers are exactly on the same page, I’m reminded of an Irish friend, who on her first day working in an LA doctor’s office was asked what she’d done over the weekend. She replied that she’d had some wonderful craic, the word the Irish use to mean fun and socializing. The problem is that it’s pronounced crack, like the drug, so her first day was spent in the narcotics testing clinic.
In the search for simplicity and clarity it’s also important to understand cultural signs. I recently gave a presentation with PowerPoint slides, where I showed what I thought was a very clever illustration: It was a photoshopped image of a large fork standing upright in a road. To me this humorously demonstrated my point that we had reached “a fork in the road” which is quite a common American expression, meaning that it’s decision-time. A puzzled audience member asked me later for an explanation: “Why did you show us a giant tableware on a road picture? Does it mean something?” And the answer is yes, it means something if you were familiar with the phrase, otherwise it just seemed like I was being kinda surrealist.
It’s a fine balancing act because I don’t want to see one-size-fits-all bland and boring communication, but I also don’t want native American speakers being so clever that no-one understands them, either because their references are too obscure, or because they are using language which is too fancy. Our purpose should always be to get the point over as clearly and simply as possible.
If you want great literature, go someplace else.
It might not have been like this: We could have been using Steve Job’s mother-tongue, Arabic, or one of the languages of Bill Gates’ ancestors, German. But instead we speak to each other in English, “as children.”
The importance of simplicity and clarity
Now in some ways this is a really positive thing because it should ensure two very important qualities: Simplicity and Clarity. Native English speakers always make things fancy and more complex than they need to, whereas someone using English as a second language has to keep it simple. The native speaker may Request a caffeinated hot beverage, while everyone else says Gimme coffee! Let’s not get confused by the name English though – what we all speak and write is actually American.
And in case you think that all native American speakers are exactly on the same page, I’m reminded of an Irish friend, who on her first day working in an LA doctor’s office was asked what she’d done over the weekend. She replied that she’d had some wonderful craic, the word the Irish use to mean fun and socializing. The problem is that it’s pronounced crack, like the drug, so her first day was spent in the narcotics testing clinic.
In the search for simplicity and clarity it’s also important to understand cultural signs. I recently gave a presentation with PowerPoint slides, where I showed what I thought was a very clever illustration: It was a photoshopped image of a large fork standing upright in a road. To me this humorously demonstrated my point that we had reached “a fork in the road” which is quite a common American expression, meaning that it’s decision-time. A puzzled audience member asked me later for an explanation: “Why did you show us a giant tableware on a road picture? Does it mean something?” And the answer is yes, it means something if you were familiar with the phrase, otherwise it just seemed like I was being kinda surrealist.
Let's get to the point...
It’s a fine balancing act because I don’t want to see one-size-fits-all bland and boring communication, but I also don’t want native American speakers being so clever that no-one understands them, either because their references are too obscure, or because they are using language which is too fancy. Our purpose should always be to get the point over as clearly and simply as possible.
If you want great literature, go someplace else.