The Ten-Hundred Most Used Words

There is a new way of writing, using only the ten hundred most used words. I can’t tell you the full name of this new way of writing because its name uses words that aren’t allowed (which I don’t think is right, to tell you the truth). But if you go here you can read all about it.

This new way of writing—which I learned about from my wife’s brother (go here)—comes from a drawing you can see here.

I’m writing this piece using only the ten hundred allowed words. And I can tell you it takes some thinking, because so many of the words I want to use I can’t. Which makes me think about our mother tongue.



I am very happy that I grew up speaking the tongue used in the land where I live, because it is—or so say most people who study these things—the tongue with the most words in the world. The guy who wrote As You Like It used almost twenty ten-hundred words in his plays, and over ten ten-hundred new words arrived in our tongue around the time that he lived. (I wrote about this here, if you want to read it.)

Think about our tongue, and how many different ways there are to say things like “cool!” or “great!” or “wow!” I speak some other tongues, and know that none of them have as many ways to say these things as does ours.

my wife speaking in a different tongue

(guess which one!)

But I don’t speak any of those other tongues nearly as well as this one, and so when I talk in those tongues I often don’t know the right word for something I want to say. So I use other, simple words to explain what I mean. It’s often strange-sounding, but it gets the job done.

It’s just like using this new way of writing, as a matter of fact.

Okay: So your job is to try this out too (go here), and put what you wrote in the place under this piece so we can all read what everyone wrote. Good fun!