Did you know there is a language called Simple English? It's a simplified version of the English language (as experienced on
Simple English Wikipedia).
Actually I have noticed that a lot of the time I am writing in simplified English. The reasons for this are that a lot of the people reading this are not native English speakers, or that they might not be, or that in fact (and this is true) a lot of the people in the world are not actually native English speakers, believe it or not. People who speak English tend to assume that everyone else does, but they might not, you know...
So even though I know that most people reading this can actually read English (of course they can; that's how they are reading this), I try not to write anything too complicated.
Even for first-language English speakers (
Anglophones - you see, it's complicated already!) I don't want to alienate anybody. It's easy to sound "clever" with a lot of
po-ly-syl-la-bic words but that is not the same as being intelligent. And if I write something that someone can't understand then I feel it has failed. You see, sometimes the
ideas are so difficult to understand that we need all the help we can get.
Here is an excerpt from an article in Simple English:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer and pianist. During his short life he wrote more than 600 pieces of music. Many people think he was one of the best composers of music of all time. He was born in the city of Salzburg on January 27, 1756. He wrote over 600 pieces of music, including the operas (music with a story) Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). His works began with a minuet (a dance) that he wrote when he was four, and end with his final piece, the Requiem, which he left unfinished. Mozart was a prodigy at the piano, and he was known as a great pianist as well as a great composer. He died on December 5, 1791 when he was 35 years old.
Well, you can't really fault it. It is clear what it means. But it is a little bit offensive when it gets over-simple. Or is it? If you are eight years old would you rather read this than
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (IPA: [ˈvɔlfgaŋ amaˈdeus ˈmoːtsart], full name Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart[1] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over six hundred works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.
Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. Visiting Vienna in 1781 he was dismissed from his Salzburg position and chose to stay in the capital, where over the rest of life he achieved fame but little financial security. The final years in Vienna yielded many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.
Mozart always learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute".[2] His influence on all subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years".[3]
?
Well, otherwise, you end up with
Mozart was a music-man. He did a lot of music. He was alive. He is not alive. The end. Bye Bye!
I'd rather have the whole truth than the easy version of the truth. Even if it's harder work. Still, you have to reach as many people as you can.
I don't know if there is ever a perfect way of communicating.
A piece of music, a drawing, a poem - they don't exist without an audience. Even if the audience is the author. So you change it to suit the audience. You always do.
Or are there exceptions?
Labels: communication, composing, meaning, teaching, the art of art, understanding, writing
