A foreign tongue cuts the flab

Creativity & Communication

Even people who don’t have English as a first tongue can benefit from its precision. For example, Haruki Murakami is one of Japan’s most successful living novelists. But when he started out, he felt the same inhibitions and awkwardness that afflict all of us when we’re trying to write an email or a document.

So one day, in desperation, he decided to write in English. Here’s what he discovered:

“Needless to say, my ability in English composition didn’t amount to much. My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax. I could only write in short, simple sentences. Which meant that, however complex and numerous the thoughts running around in my head, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me.

The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, and everything arranged to fit a container of limited size.”

Murakami tries writing in English. His vocabulary and syntax are limited, so the sentences become short. Complex thoughts cannot arrive in their original crowd. He must decide what comes first.

Back in Japanese, he translates the simpler structure. The constraint has already done the editing.

Fluent business writers often need an artificial version of this problem. Vocabulary permits every qualification to remain. Abstract nouns avoid naming the actor. One long clause connects ideas the writer has failed to arrange.

A release note is rewritten for somebody outside the speciality. Technical shorthand no longer carries private meaning. The writer produces one sentence naming the action and consequence, then restores only the detail that changes either.

Simple language can still be inaccurate. Law, science and difficult emotion require distinctions that take space. Writing outside a first language can be frustrating and limiting; romanticising it from fluent comfort is patronising.

The useful constraint is priority; limited vocabulary was merely Murakami’s route to it. The same exercise works in a first language: allow only short sentences for one draft, then restore detail deliberately. Which thought must the reader understand first? Which detail changes the claim? Which adjective contributes more than enthusiasm?

What would remain if your vocabulary suddenly shrank by half?