Basic English (British American Scientific International and Commercial English) is an English-based controlled language created by the linguist and philosopher

Charles Kay Ogden Charles Kay Ogden (; 1 June 1889 – 20 March 1957) was an English linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an eccentric and outsider, he took part in many ventures related to literature, politics, the arts, and philo ...

as an

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...

, and as an aid for teaching

English as a second language English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EFL ...

. Basic English is, in essence, a simplified subset of regular English. It was presented in Ogden's book ''Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar''. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards of Harvard University and

of the University of Cambridge in England. The design of Basic English drew heavily on the semiotic theory put forward by Ogden and Richards in their book '' The Meaning of Meaning''. Ogden's Basic, and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Allied victory in World War II as a means for world peace. He was convinced that the world needed to gradually eradicate minority languages and use as much as possible only one, English in either a simple or complete form. A widely known 1933 book on this is a science fiction work on history up to the year 2106 titled ''

The Shape of Things to Come ''The Shape of Things to Come'' is a work of science fiction by British writer H. G. Wells, published in 1933. It takes the form of a future history which ends in 2106. Synopsis A long economic slump causes a major war that leaves Europe d ...

'' by H. G. Wells. In this work, Basic English is the inter-language of the future world, a world in which after long struggles a global authoritarian government manages to unite humanity and force everyone to learn it as a second language. Although Basic English was not built into a program, similar simplifications have been devised for various international uses. Ogden's associate I. A. Richards promoted its use in schools in China. It has influenced the creation of

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the State media, state-owned news network and International broadcasting, international radio broadcaster of the United States, United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international br ...

's Learning English for news broadcasting, and Simplified Technical English, another English-based controlled language designed to write technical manuals. What survives of Ogden's Basic English is the basic 850-word list used as the beginner's vocabulary of the English language taught worldwide, especially in Asia.

Design principles

Ogden tried to simplify English while keeping it normal for native speakers, by specifying grammar restrictions and a controlled small vocabulary which makes an extensive use of

paraphrasing A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''. History Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...

. Most notably, Ogden allowed only 18 verbs, which he called "operators". His "General Introduction" says, "There are no 'verbs' in Basic English", with the underlying assumption that, as noun use in English is very straightforward but verb use/conjugation is not, the elimination of verbs would be a welcome simplification.A good summary in Bill Templer: ''Towards a People's English: Back to BASIC in EIL'
Humanising Language Teaching
.

Word lists

Ogden's word lists include only word roots, which in practice are extended with the defined set of affixes and the full set of forms allowed for any available word (noun, pronoun, or the limited set of verbs).Se

for details. The 850 core words of Basic English are found in Wiktionary's Basic English word list. This core is theoretically enough for everyday life. However, Ogden prescribed that any student should learn an additional 150-word list for everyday work in some particular field, by adding a list of 100 words particularly useful in a general field (e.g., science, verse, business, etc.), along with a 50-word list from a more specialised subset of that general field, to make a basic 1000-word vocabulary for everyday work and life. Moreover, Ogden assumed that any student should already be familiar with (and thus may only review) a core subset of around 200 "international" words. Therefore, a first-level student should graduate with a core vocabulary of around 1200 words. A realistic general core vocabulary could contain around 2000 words (the core 850 words, plus 200 international words, and 1000 words for the general fields of trade, economics, and science). It is enough for a "standard" English level. This 2000 word vocabulary represents "what any learner should know". At this level students could start to move on their own. Ogden's Basic English 2000 word list and Voice of America's Special English 1500 word list serve as dictionaries for the Simple English Wikipedia.

Rules

Basic English includes a simple grammar for modifying or combining its 850 words to talk about additional meanings (

morphological derivation Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is differenti ...

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

). The grammar is based on English, but is much simpler. * Plural nouns are formed by adding ''-s'' or related forms, as in ''drinks'', ''boxes'', or ''countries''. * Nouns are formed with the endings ''-er'' (as in ''prisoner'') or ''-ing'' (''building''). * Adjectives are formed with the endings ''-ing'' (''boiling'') or ''-ed'' (''mixed''). * Adverbs can be formed by adding ''-ly'' (for example ''tightly'') to words that Basic English calls "qualities" (adjectives that describe objects). * The words ''more'' and ''most'' are used for comparison (for example ''more complex''), but ''-er'' and ''-est'' may appear in common use (''cheaper''). * Negatives can be formed with ''un-'' (''unwise''). * The word ''do'' is used in questions, as it is in English (''Do you have some?''). * Both pronouns and what Basic English calls "operators" (a set of ten

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s) use the different forms they have in English (for example ''I go to him'', ''He goes to me''). * Compound words can be formed by combining two nouns (e.g. ''soapbox'') or a noun and a preposition, which Basic English calls "directives" (''sunup''). * International words, words that are the same or similar in English and other European languages (e.g. ''radio''), use the English form. English forms are also used for numbers, dates, money, or measurements. * Any technical terms or special vocabulary needed for a task should be written in inverted commas and then be explained in the text using words from the Basic English vocabulary (for example ''the 'vocabulary' is the list of words'').

Criticism

Like all

s (or IALs), Basic English may be criticised as inevitably based on personal preferences, and thus, paradoxically, inherently divisive. Moreover, like all natural language based IALs, Basic is subject to criticism as unfairly biased towards the native speaker community.For instance, a sample quotation fro
the auxlang mailing list archives
and another from noted linguist

Robert A. Hall, Jr. Robert Anderson Hall Jr. (April 4, 1911December 2, 1997) was an American linguist and specialist in the Romance languages. He was a professor of Linguistics at Cornell University and the first president of The Wodehouse Society (US). Hall was a ...

As a teaching aid for

, Basic English has been criticised for the choice of the core vocabulary and for its grammatical constraints.For instance, by proponents of Essential World English. Se
a summary of EWE
for instance and, again, the linguist

In 1944,

readability Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects that ...

expert

Rudolf Flesch Rudolf Franz Flesch (8 May 1911 – 5 October 1986) was an Austrian-born naturalized American writer (noted for his book '' Why Johnny Can't Read''), and also a readability expert and writing consultant who was a vigorous proponent of plain Eng ...

published an article in ''

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

'', "How Basic is Basic English?" in which he said, "It's not basic, and it's not English." The essence of his complaint is that the vocabulary is too restricted, and, as a result, the text ends up being awkward and more difficult than necessary. He also argues that the words in the Basic vocabulary were arbitrarily selected, and notes that there had been no empirical studies showing that it made language simpler. In his 1948 paper " A Mathematical Theory of Communication",

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts I ...

contrasted the limited vocabulary of Basic English with

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

's ''

Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...

'', a work noted for a wide vocabulary. Shannon notes that the lack of vocabulary in Basic English leads to a very high level of redundancy, whereas Joyce's large vocabulary "is alleged to achieve a compression of semantic content."

Literary references

In the novel ''

'', published in 1933, H. G. Wells depicted Basic English as the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

of a new elite that after a prolonged struggle succeeds in uniting the world and establishing a

totalitarian Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...

world government World government is the concept of a single political authority with jurisdiction over all humanity. It is conceived in a variety of forms, from tyrannical to democratic, which reflects its wide array of proponents and detractors. A world gove ...

. In the future world of Wells' vision, virtually all members of humanity know this language. From 1942 to 1944

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalit ...

was a proponent of Basic English, but in 1945 he became critical of

universal language Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea of ...

s. Basic English later inspired his use of

Newspeak Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...

in ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...

''.

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...

criticized his own 1945 novel '' Brideshead Revisited'', which he had previously called his magnum opus, in the preface of the 1959 reprint: "It orld War IIwas a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster—the period of

soya beans Soya may refer to: Food * Soya bean, or soybean, a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean * Soya sauce, see soy sauce, a fermented sauce made from soybeans, roasted grain, water and salt Places * Sōya District, ...

and Basic English—and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language that now, with a full stomach, I find distasteful." In his story "

Gulf A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodie ...

", science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein used a

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

called

Speedtalk Speedtalk is a fictional constructed language and key plot device in Robert A. Heinlein's novella ''Gulf'' (1949). Speedtalk is a logic-based language with complex syntax, minimal vocabulary, and a rich phoneme inventory (written with letters suc ...

, in which every Basic English word is replaced with a single

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

, as an appropriate means of communication for a race of genius supermen.

Samples

The

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

has been often used for an impressionistic language comparison:

Notes

References

External links

* Charles Kay Ogden,

', London: Paul Treber * Charles Kay Ogden,

', Cambridge: The Orthological Institute. (1937)e
Ogden.Basic-English.org
Ogden's books and word lists online and several discussions
Basic-English.org
Ongoing project to support and update Ogden's Basic (with downloads)

a discussion about Basic English, with supporters and critics * Charles Kay Ogden
Basic English Course
(1930) * Augusto Ghio Del'Rio
Inglés Básico
1954 translation of Ogden's Basic English Course for Spanish Speakers
Simple English Helper Tool
— Detect words which are not in a given dictionary, Ogden's Basic English dictionary list included

— some criticisms of Basic English and suggestions for overcoming its problems {{English dialects by continent International auxiliary languages Technical communication English language Controlled English Constructed languages introduced in the 1930s 1930 introductions