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.”
