After going through various posts including those of two "nominees" for the english mastery awards I have a few to say
The primary objective of a any piece of language work is to convey a certain message..except in an english examination room, nowhere any language user is supposed to have the motive of showing how much he/she masters the language..so if one posts a certain message then he should have the sole intention of being understood..otherwise itakuwa ni kutafuta sifa ambazo hazijengi.
Avery language has things like slangs, jargons and the like..if you dont belong to certain profession, age group, class and the like there are some words hutakaa uyajue labda kwa bahati mbaya...so to me if you are a lawyer and you tend to use legal language like ceteris paribus, quid pro quo, and the like while you are communicating to the general public at large then I will question your intelligence, seriously!!
It is absurd that I should have no problems in understanding what Agatha Christie, Leon Uris, Charles Dickens or Shakespeare has written the have problem understanding Ngugi and Peter Abrahams!!!
To me, I believe one knows better english who can say something and be understood by a range of all people from a Tanzanian Standard Seven Leaver to a man with a chain of degrees rather than a Tanzanian who can write something and have an englishman run for his dictionary!!!unless a message is coded for particular recepients!!!
If you intend to deliver a message for all people and go to pains to choose big words just to show that you know..what difference do you have with a person who hides something and at the same wishes people to see (not find) what he has hidden?
There is a big difference between delivering a message to be understood and delivering a message to show off!!!