Dictionary of Cliches [Mass Market Paperback]

It was nice to hear from you. Please do not worry that your "English is not perfect" -- you should see how bad my Japanese is! (I don't know any.)

But, for better or worse, I'm actually something of a writer. But maybe you will know someone who can help you with the more difficult words. It's actually a bit hard for me to write the "smaller" words now that I have written so much for so long -- I actually use a thesaurus "backwards"; sometimes it's hard for me to think of a synonym for a "big word" that I tend to "think in" most of the time, so I have to "look up the smaller one."

GOOD "QUICK TIPS" FOR LEARNING ENGLISH

Sometimes I even resort to using a "Cross-Word Dictionary." They are better than one might think!

THERE IS ACTUALLY A "CODE" TO ENGLISH that you can kind of "break" if you read a book that breaks the language down to the Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes. Like "pro-" for example, means "moving forward," so: promotion = to move forward with a job or a product proponent = a person trying to see some ideas move forward propose = when a person brings some idea up that he/she would like to move forward program = an agenda you would like to see move forward provoke = to try to move forward an idea or cause by inciting others

... and there are many, many others. Tell all your friends and family! A great book about this is a little $5.00 paperback (in the U.S., anyway; I know in Japan "everything is more expensive," because it all has to be imported, right?) is called:

"INSTANT VOCABULARY" by Ida Erlich

Another really good little $5.00 paperback is:

"THE DICTIONARY OF CLICHES" by James Rogers

THIS BOOK IS VERY SPECIAL, because I have looked at many similar books over the years (and confirmed this with non-U.S.-natives I have often recommended the book to), but is THE BEST because the format it uses is uniquely clear, obvious, non-confusing ... and FUN! (And, anytime you can make learning fun, I think, you have really achieved something!) It covers what are called "idioms" -- words and phrases that "don't translate exactly"; in fact, even if you're a master of the English language, if you took them literally, many make no sense at all. (He also explains, in a brief and fun way, where they came from.) A few follow:

"To Put Your Foot in Your Mouth" = Say the wrong thing at the wrong time. "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish" = Save money on little things, but waste money expensive things. "Cat Got Your Tongue?" = Are "caught" with "nothing to say." "Black Comedy" = Humor about a subject(s) that is supposed to be somber and serious.

Cliches are considered "lazy speech / thinking" for those who are particularly learned in a language (say, if you're writing for The New York Times), because they have been used 1,000 times. But, the GREAT thing about cliches (that James Rogers might even mention in the book) is if you are NEW to the language, and NOT learned -- you can quickly and easily learn "what everybody else knows already" (and probably, sooner or later, you should too). Not only this, but if you SAY or WRITE these "cliches" for others -- you can almost be guaranteed they will quickly, easily and automatically get your point right away. If I were learning another language, probably one of the first things I would want to know (apart from the curse words, of course) are these casual, ordinary phrases that "everybody" (except me!) is "already familiar with."

AMAZON.COM

In fact, you may be able to just find them on Amazon.Com. Maybe before I finish this letter, I'll go to that Web site, and see if they have anything more written about it you might find useful. I'm sorry; I did just go there, and though hey DID have both books, they had almost nothing to say about them (and NO "reviews" -- I hope you don't mind, I'm going to cut-and-paste this part of this e-mail there right after I finish it, so many more people can benefit from it; you can probably see it there in a couple of days, they say). I was not really surprised, though. These are "non-fiction" sort of "list" books, that don't really "have a story," etc. And if no one like me, who wants to "fix the world" would have stopped by (and the 'Web is still pretty new, don't forget) to put in their two cents on how to do it. Jeez, I didn't really want to go into the whole big spiel (and, forgive me if I did on my original e-mail, way back when [which I should have on disk somewhere -- but I know I don't have right here, right now, so I may as well re-write it; very low-tech, and inefficient, I know]), but I feel this is a pretty important topic, so I may as well come out with it:

ONE WORLD LANGUAGE

It's the ONE WORLD LANGUAGE idea. Now, OF COURSE I don't want to "obliterate everybody else's language." There MUST be some "happy medium" that we can all live with -- yet make serious progress on the problems produced by having too many languages in the world (re-printing many things in many languages, not being able to communicate with everyone wherever you go, etc.). I think an important reference in discussing this (at least to Westerners / in the U.S.) is THE TOWER OF BABEL story in the Bible. Unless I seriously mis-read that story (and please forgive me for not being able to quickly cut-and-paste the "exact text" or other iron-clad reference; also, I will be happy to hear from any Biblical scholars who feel they can "set me right" on any mistake(s) I have made), it seems to say very clearly that GOD PUNISHED THE HUMANS BY FORCING THEM ALL TO SPEAK DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. I (feel I) perfectly understand that "everyone wants to hold onto their own home, cultural language." So would I. But the chief reason is the "mind's language opportunity years" (perhaps this, too, is some of God's "punishment" upon the humans -- I can't even imagine the "slight" -- but we'll leave that possibility for another discussion another time) ... where it appears pretty iron-clad by now that the difficulty that EVERYONE seems to have (though women more than men seem biologically predisposed to more easily learn languages given the most recent findings by John Gray, Ph.D., and others) ONCE OUT OF CHILDHOOD. The "quick and easy" solution here seems to be to have children learn their own home, cultural language AND the World Language. But, which language should be the World Language? I'm willing to have all languages submitted to a world-wide committee set up for the purpose of making this determination, perhaps once and for all. And we may set up some "logical criteria" for what "The Best Language in The World" (only an "honorary" title -- hopefully "not taken too seriously / jealously" for a quick, easy handle for the one language we may all use in the ordinary course of our lives, in business, etc. -- essentially "everywhere but home"):

1. Wide Dissemenation

Because this is essentially "already a vote" by Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" of the marketplace on what people likely truly desire. Also, it bespeaks "the least amount of trouble created for the greatest number of people" who might (rightly or not) feel "greatly inconvenienced" by having their lives interrupted by having to learn what has been adopted as the World Language. Finally, for the moment at least, it lets out Esperanto (which this author is not familiar with), which no one people ever seems to have "taken to heart" as their own, and that in itself may be looked at as at least fairly relevant data.

2. Succinctness

LIFE IS SHORT (or "life's short," for brevity), and as any given person, at any given moment, may expire -- it essentially means that any given person's time, at any given moment is valuable and should not be needlesly wasted. Our World Language should recognize this as an irreducible primary of existence, and all communication should have the potential to be quickly accomplished. This would leave out the Spanish language(s), for example, because (at least to this author's current knowledge) IT APPEARS THAT EACH AND EVERY WORD HAS MORE SYLLABLES THAN ITS ENGLISH COUNTERPART -- thus making ordinary communication needlessly cumbersome and necessitating rapid speaking to accomplish communication of a large number of syllables, which may not necessarily be conveying germane information.

3. Large Vocabulary

It's a big, wide world out there, with many fine distintctions, growing bigger and finer every day; why would we wish to limit ourselves to limited expression? English (at least in the U.S.) is very "Catholic" (in the