Basic English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Some adjectives can be turned into adverbs with the ending ~ly.
4. For comparatives and superlatives, either more and most or ~er and ~est may be used.
5. Some adjectives can be inverted with un~.
6. Yes/no questions are formed by adding do at the beginning or changing the word order.
7. Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.
8. 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).
9. Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock time, and international words are in English forms.
10. 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.

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

• 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)
• 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)
• World English Organization
• 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