Reading Haruki Murakami´s Novelist as a vocation, I was alerted to this: "Ultimately, I learned that there was no need for a lot of difficult words..." when he explains that he began writing in English, a language he hardly knew. And "difficult words" made me stop, put the book down, and come to my computer. What are difficult words? Is "alert" a difficult word? Is "quiddity" a difficult word? How about "conceit"? I suppose, then, that we could divide vocabulary into two parts: easy words and difficult words, but I do not think this is the way "difficult" works when dealing with words. (I think I am getting all tangled up!) Words are meanings, and meanings are neither difficult nor easy. We must use the exact word to represent the right meaning, as simple as that, and that is why we must expand our vocabulary in order to use the right words to describe our conceits. No, there are no difficult words. We might, however, have difficult meanings in our brains and that, I know, is a horse of a different color.
PS. I remember that in my youth people referred to "5-cent words" and "10-dollar words." But that was long ago.
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