What exactly is the need for building up vocabulary or knowing new words over and above the common words ? I am not asking from academic perspective but trying to grasp the real need for learning new words. Some say that it helps express oneself better but how that’s not possible with the most commonly used words and rare words are anyways perhaps might not be comprehensible as they are uncommon. Isn’t simple and easy better ? Most books use uncommon words that are not spoken in day to day life. Request your views

  • 2sk84ever@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    even the simple easy words must be learned. teachers say you speak english with 100 words. would you be okay with just that? you could try. and you can technically paint with just five colors and represent everything. but nobody is that good. more paints means more accuracy, and more words means more accuracy. with 100 words you can build a village, but with real vocabulary helping you, more complex jobs become first possible, then easy. no spaceships were ever built without careful conversation and precise language. “the tolerance of the o-ring is 0.001 m” uses three vocabulary words and without it the challenger mission was lost. you just cant say that sentence meaningfully without some solid language. o-rings are not something anyone “eyeballs”, and .001 m tolerance is a meaningful concept that people must learn since nobody can feel it, but “tolerance” means “acceptable error that wont break stuff” here, and even that goes over peoples heads.

    nobody who went to the moon knew that they would do that as a kid. they did their homework and prepared for anything. they could have built submarines just as easily. or fought a war.

    but calling a post a tweet is not vocabulary. reach for powerful vocabulary, not the most basic popular garbage. knowing ten words for snow is not worth much.

    learn some latin vocabulary, if you want to better understand english. learn a computer language vocabulary and try programming. or learn a whole language! you might think being able to say things in another language isnt useful; leave that aside, and it still trains your mind to work on a whole new level.

    need makes it seem like you have a problem now, and you dont. but you have opportunities. among many things, native english speakers are prized english teachers (as long as they can learn some foreign vocabulary). its actually one of the few forms of education that comes with real employment opportunities.