As the average US newspaper is on the reading level of a 5th grade student
(US student) and most newspapers today go for the 'lowest common
demoninator',  we can see that communications (especially emails and
conversations) exist and can be quite successul with a limited English
vocabulary. While nuances are not part of our language in these
situations, I think many who speak English as their primary langauges
don't wish to converse on a level any higher anyway. So 5th grade level
works for most everyone. (A few years back I taught several students whose
first langauge was Russian and they could converse on the 5th grade level
after 1 year of study!)

Karen

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Colin Whiteley wrote:

> Hmmm... The British Empire, followed by American economic colonialism,
> coming at the same time as the communications revolution, and the fact that
> computer science was mostly developed by English speakers, may have more to
> do with it than any inherent features of English! You can be sure that if
> the dominant language in the world were French or Chinese, (or Swahili or
> Bantu for that matter), native speakers would be telling us why this was the
> most suitable language of all.
>
> Colin
>
> >
> >
> > JB scripsit:

English might be
> > >30 percent fewer ASCII characters as compared to other major
> > >languages.  Brevity!
> >