They Have a Word for It
A Fun and Lighthearted Lexicon of Words & Phrases considered Untranslatable.
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What Hacker News says
- For anyone who's interested in these I have a book that I like to flick through occasionally: They Have a Word for It by Howard Rheingold
My favourite is Yugen - a Japanese word that encapsulates awareness and appreciation for nature and the universe.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/424092.They_Have_a_Wo...
- Stephen King said something like "To become a better writer, write a lot and read a lot". Here's a couple of articles that discuss that idea more:
http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/dreamgates/2011/06/read-...
http://writetodone.com/how-to-use-reading-to-become-a-better...
Beyond that, there are, of course, tons of books for writers, including some specifically for tech writers. A lot of what you'll find on the shelf at, say, Barnes & Noble is about fiction writing, but then again, to some extent you could say that good writing is good writing regardless of whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I don't claim to be a great writer, but I can share a few titles from my own bookshelf on writing:
1. The Elements of Style - Strunk & White
2. On Writing Well - William Zinsser
3. NLP For Writers - Bekki Hill
4. A Certain 'Je Ne Sais Quoi' - Chloe Rhodes
5. A Manual For Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations - Kate L. Turabian
6. The Elements of Technical Writing - Gary Blake & Robert W. Bly
7. The Art of Scientific Writing - Ebel, Bliefert, Russey
8. Writers Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing - Michelle Rubert (ed.)
9. On Writing - Stephen King
10. Zen In The Art of Writing - Ray Bradbury
11. Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss
12. Where Do You Get Your Ideas - Fred White
13. The Complete Guide to Article Writing - Naveed Saleh
14. HBR Guide To Better Business Writing - Bryan A. Garner
15. Make A Scene - Jordan E. Rosenfeld
16. Beginnings, Middles, & Ends - Nancy Kress
I'm also a big believer in having a strong vocabulary, even though I don't try to write in a pretentious, sesquipedalian fashion very often. But sometimes it helps to have that "just right" word available. To that end, I recommend:
17. Big Words You Should Know - David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua and Justin Cord Hayes
18. The Words You Should Know To Sound Smart - Robert W. Bly
19. The Dictionary of Difficult Words - John Ayto
20. Rogets Thesaurus of Words For Intellectuals - David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua, and Justin Cord Hayes
21. The Thinker's Thesaurus - Peter E. Meltzer
22. Fiske Word Power - Fiske, Mallison, Mandell
23. The Well Spoken Thesaurus - Tom Heehler
24. They Have A Word For It - Howard Rheingold
and remember, as Aldous Huxley said "The proper study of mankind is books". And on that note, may I recommend keeping a couple of books of quotations around. A good quote can be quite useful.
25. Mark My Words - Great Quotations and the Stories Behind Them - Nigel Rees
26. The Giant Book of American Quotations - Carruth & Ehrlich
as for websites and blogs and what-not, there is a technical writing subreddit:
http://technicalwriting.reddit.com
and https://writing.reddit.com
and
You also can't go wrong studying the essays of George Orwell
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/index_en
And I think that's about all I have to contribute, except to reiterate "write a lot, read a lot".
Source: I have no particular distinction as a writer, but I have managed to get a few articles published at InfoWorld: http://www.infoworld.com/author/Phil-Rhodes/ and I've written quite a few blog posts for my full-time employer, like: http://mammothdata.com/big-data-open-source-risk-managment/ and I have written most of the content on the Fogbeam company blog: http://fogbeam.blogspot.com I like to think that if I keep reading and writing, I might actually acquire some skill at it some day.
HTH, YMMV, IANAL, WTFBBQ, ETC.
- First, the "there are 250K words in English" statement is kind of wrong, it's probably much higher, e.g. OED states on their web page (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/93) that "If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million." English undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary.
As for the "they have a word for it and we don't" thing: The examples given are delightful, also see the book "They Have a Word for It" for other interesting examples. I can give more examples from my native language, "kismet" "ayip" that are untranslatable. But look at that first word, kismet: you've probably seen it used, albeit rarely, in magazines, etc. (putting aside the wireless sniffer, of course, of that name). This is the power of English, it voracious appetite for word adoption.
Ask yourself this: How many of those language listed in the article have a thesaurus, and is they have how thick it would be. Many languages are lexically shallow, i.e. there is usually one word for many concepts, with few synonym sets.
