How speakers of Romance languages can improve their English writing
Speakers of Romance languages like French, Italian, or Spanish can face some specific difficulties when writing advanced English.
If you are in this situation, check out the following 3 tips to help you with the most common difficulties:
Problem #1: Latin words are too formal and heavy
English has both Germanic and Latin roots. Words with Germanic roots tend to be shorter and more common, while words with Latin roots tend to be more formal. Some examples are "help" vs "assist" and "start" vs "commence".
Speakers of Romance languages may prefer words that come from Latin. It's a natural choice because these words have the same Latin roots and feel more familiar! However, these words are longer and less commonly used in English, so they can make your English sentences sound overly formal and heavy.
In English, we prefer to use short words over long words and words of Germanic origin are more commonly used than words of Latin origin.
In other words, an English word that sounds common and easy to a Romance language speaker can actually be formal and rare in English.
To solve this problem, choose more words from the Germanic side of English! They are shorter, more common, and can lighten up your sentences.
Note: In academic writing, we often have key words of latin origin. These already tend to be quite long and heavy, so balancing them out with shorter, Germanic-origin words can make your text more readable.
Solution: Get out of your comfort zone and use more words of Germanic origin!
Problem #2: Sentences are too long and complicated
Most Romance languages favor longer, complex sentences with many subclauses over short and simple ones. However, the English academic tradition prefers short, clear sentences. Work on creating one "subject-verb-object" structure, then stop.
Pay attention to your "complicated sentences" on ReallyWrite and aim to have as few complicated sentences as possible.
Solution: Use shorter, simpler structures. Use parallelism!
Problem #3: Sentences use too many zombie nouns.
Romance languages often use more nouns and fewer verbs than English, which prefers strong verbs that convey action.
You can use ReallyWrite to find the zombie nouns and replace them with a precise verb whenever possible.
Solution: Use more precise verbs!