Thoughts about Orwell’s “Politics and The English Language,” “Why I Write”

I checked on line and found there are more than one million English words but Chinese has less than 100,000 words.

The words you may use in Chinese are 12,000, frequently used are 4,000.

The words you may use in English are 160,000, frequently used are 40,000 (not included plural and past tense.)

It needs 1 year to learn English grammar but it’ll take you 12 years to learn enough English words so you can read the newspaper.

It’ll take you much more time to learn English words than Chinese.

          I feel relief after finding those numbers because I always feel bad about reading English newspapers. It is such a task for me.

These two Orwell’s essays, “Politics and The English Language” and “Why I Write” 

http://iis.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Politics_%26_English_language.pdf

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

are extremely difficult for me for there is so much new vocabulary. Thank God that it seems the teacher doesn't bother to have us write a response. For me, what Orwell said in “Politics and The English Language” is well known for everyone as political correctness. Politicians were doing it, are doing it and will do it forever. A conscious writer who is so into politics as Orwell, he is doomed to be lonely and unhappy, but he can’t change anything.

          It sounds like he was close to being insane. In public school today, he would probably be put on medicine. What impressed me the most in “Why I Write” is “All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.” He said what I feel because writing in the blog; I do want people to read my nonsense. On the other hand, to actually write the mystery motives is difficult. I admire Orwell that he “discovered the joy of mere words” when he was 16 and he “knew that he had a facility with words.” Not only that, he pulled himself out of writing the darkest side of his soul which reminds me the English teacher said, “I want to read that you write about someone you hate instead of you love.” It’s difficult though. It’s hard for an ordinary person to dig out the secrets which had been buried so deep in their life and write it down. It’s the Unbearable Lightness of Being. However, Orwell didn't do what he’d claimed in his essay, “to use simple and clear English” because he gave me a headache reading his 1984. I don’t like the story at all. It makes me depressed.

 Flowers cheer me up.