From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   Michelle Bottorff wrote on 12/11/2014 :   
   > William Vetter  wrote:   
   >   
   >>> When I think about diction levels in my writing, I'm usually not   
   >>> thinking about the reader at all.  I'm thinking about the character I am   
   >>> writing as.   
   >>   
   >> When I write in POV character voices, and the diction level of the   
   >> character is modest, I do.  But when the character is well-educated, an   
   >> aristocrat of his race, this becomes an issue that I give   
   >> consideration.   
   >> I think it doesn't matter to send a reader to his dictionary every few   
   >> pages, but you lose when you begin to blitz him.   
   >>   
   >> ...   
   >> ...this guy was otherwise very agreeable to work   
   >> with, but it took me hours to figure out what he was even talking about   
   >> when I read his manuscripts.  It was full of lines like   
   >> "The substrate was reticulated."   
   >   
   > I have at least one passage where I am deliberately trying to "blitz".   
   > It's an example of the Tamul nomad's storytelling tradition, and you   
   > only get two sentances before Prince Asond cuts in wanting to know if   
   > the intended audience could possibly understand even one word in ten.   
      
   That's different -- that's a trick, where you tell the reader he's not   
   supposed to get it.   
   >   
   > I wrote that bit because someone complained that my Tamul heroine   
   > shouldn't know difficult words, when she couldn't read.   
   >   
   > That bothered me.   
   >   
   > Illiterate societies often have very rich, complex and ornate languages.   
      
   I've been studying the Navajo language, which had no written form until   
   ethnologists gave it one.  It doesn't consist of very many base words   
   compared to European languages, but it has a fantastic capacity to   
   expand them into elaborate compound words.  _Mastodon_ expands to   
   "hairy one lassos with his nose," and _brake_ includes the complete   
   linkage of parts that lead from a wooden lever to the brake that   
   presses against a wagon wheel.  I don't know if complex is better.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)