Wouldn't life be simpler if you didn't have to repeat yourself? If every time you attempted to persuade someone of something, they got the message first time? If your instructions were carried out without fault - first time, every time? My kids have taught me a powerful lesson in making these happen more often.

I have two young daughters, aged four and seven. Statistically, they probably have around 1,500 to 2,500 words in their respective vocabularies (compared with a typical adult's vocabulary of about 20,000 words). And boy do they ask a lot of questions!

Two of the recent favourites were "what makes the wind blow?" and "what is a government?". What got me thinking was that, with a bit of thought, it was possible to answer these questions using only words from the girls' limited 'personal dictionaries'.

So why do we adults need all those extra words?

On the surface this seems like a ridiculous question. Obviously we need extra words in order to be efficient with our communication. Most of these extra words summarise concepts it would be just too hard to explain in full every time.

Why would an accountant want to refer to the 'amount remaining after expenses have been subtracted from revenues' when he could simply say 'profit'? Why would a chef want 'to remove the browned bits of food from the bottom of a pan after saut