#i think i've been given a long-overdue appreciation for the particular nuances and craft work of english | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mwebber · 11 months

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honestly in general i think word choice is one of my favourite parts of "proper" writing. like ofc there's the usual rush to get the sentiment/spirit/flavour of the idea down on paper and out of one's head, and that's always the fun bit. but during the revision of a sentence or paragraph, it's an incredible feeling to carefully handpick words with exact connotations in our current cultural context and be like, yeah! this is how i wanted to say what i wanted to say, and i look forward to seeing how time and circumstance will change the meaning of this. this is how i want to contribute to the dialogue of this genre.

and they don't need to be big words either! a lesson from kurt vonnegut: sometimes the best word choice is the simplest one, if only because of context, but all the same. a sentence like "she was sad" can be something profound given the right occasion to really flourish.

#being in the environment i am now where i'm learning the ins and outs of my second language #i think i've been given a long-overdue appreciation for the particular nuances and craft work of english #and maybe also the way our brains process language. idk like i tried to switch back to mandarin the other day and while i could still like #understand it?#even my usual accented fumbling was horrendously bad. the ability to recall basic vocab that i hear every time i'm on the phone? gone #embarrassing but also a welcome sign that i rlly have been thinking in french as of late perhaps..#maybe to perfect my mandarin i just need to spend a summer in taiwan

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