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Appendix:Basic English word list in
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Basic English is a
constructed language with a small number of words created by
Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic
English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar
(1930). The language is based on a simplified version of
English, in essence a subset of it.
Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English,
seven months for
Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English, comparable
with Ido.
Thus Basic English is used by companies who need to make complex
books for international use, and by language schools that need
to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.
Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be
paraphrased with other words, and he strove to make the words
work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words
through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also
simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English
users.
The concept gained its greatest publicity just after the
Second World War as a tool for world peace. Although it was
not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised
for various international uses.
I. A. Richards was a forceful advocate of the use of Basic
English, and lobbied the government of
China
to teach it in schools there.
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Contents
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1
Rules of grammar
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2
Historical references
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3
Word List
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4
See also
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5
External links
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Rules of grammar
Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allows people to
use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal
English way.
- Words are pluralised by adding an ~s on the end
of the word. If there are special ways to make a plural word
in English, such as ~es and ~ies, they should
be used instead.
- Words like change, turn, and use
are used as verbs, but the 300 of them may be turned into
different forms by adding the ending ~er or ~ing;
or into adjectives by adding ~ing and ~ed.
Only act is to be turned into actor rather
than acter.
- Some adjectives can be turned into adverbs with the
ending ~ly.
- For comparatives and superlatives, either more
and most or ~er and ~est may be used.
- Some adjectives can be inverted with un~.
- Yes/no questions are formed by adding do at the
beginning or changing the word order.
-
Operators and
pronouns
conjugate as in normal English.
- Combined words can be formed from two operators (for
example become), from two nouns (for example
newspaper or headline) or from a noun and a
direction (sundown).
- Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock
time, and international words are in English forms.
- The wordlist can be augmented by the
jargon of an industry or science. For example, in a
grammar, words such as grammar or noun might
be used, even though they are not on Ogden's wordlist.
Historical references
In the
future history book
The Shape of Things to Come, published in
1933,
H.G. Wells depicted Basic English as the
lingua franca of a new elite which after a prolonged
struggle succeeds in uniting the world and establishing a
world government. In the future world of Wells' vision,
virtually all members of humanity know this language.
FDR to Churchill on Basic English
Winston Churchill and
Franklin Roosevelt supported the idea of using Basic English
as an international language, and Churchill recommended it in a
speech at
Harvard University in
1943.
Amused critics (notably U.S. president
Franklin Delano Roosevelt) said that "blood, toil, tears and
sweat" translates into Basic English as "blood, hard work,
eyewash and body water".
According to the
Times Educational Supplement's
Talking To series,
George Orwell might have parodied Basic English in his book
Nineteen Eighty-Four. The references to
Newspeak could be interpreted as a hidden critique against "universal
languages".
George Bernard Shaw is said to have subsidized Basic
English, but this may be a misunderstanding: Shaw's real
interest in language reform - and the bulk of his estate after
his death - went to devising a new alphabet for non-Basic
English.
Noted science fiction author
Robert A. Heinlein used a form of Basic English in his story
"Gulf"
as a language appropriate for a race of genius supermen.[citation
needed]
Word List
These are the 850 core words of Basic English. (See
Appendix:Basic English word list)
See also
-
Bible in Basic English
-
Inter-Esperanto or Baza
-
E Prime
-
Special English
-
Simplified English
-
Wycliffe Bible Translators#EasyEnglish
-
Globish
-
European English
-
Basic English picture wordlist
-
Simple English Wikipedia
External links
Simple English edition of
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Charles Kay Ogden,
Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar,
London: Paul Treber
- Charles Kay Ogden,
Basic English and Grammatical Reform, Cambridge: The
Orthological Institute. (1937).
- I. A. Richards & Christine Gibson, Learning Basic
English: A Practical Handbook for English-Speaking People,
New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1945)
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http://www.basic-english.org
-
Wiktionary:Basic English template (uses Basic English
word list as a basis for studying equivalent basic words in
other languages)
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World English Organization
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VOA News - Voice of America Special English - News Radio for
English Learners
-
Online tool which might help you to write Basic English
texts - Detect words which are not in some dictionary.
Ogden's Basic English dictionary list included.
-
Essential World English - some criticisms to Basic
English and suggestions to overcome its problems
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English pidgin and creole languages |
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