Basic English is an attempted core subset of the English language created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930).

It is based on a simplified version of English, in essence a subset of it. Basic English is used by groups 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 attempted 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. Most notably, Ogden eliminated verbs, saying in his General Introduction that "There are no 'verbs' in Basic English." Since noun use in English is very straightforward, but verb use/conjugation is not, this is a great simplification.

Ogden's Basic (or "BASIC"), and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Second World War as a tool for world peace. Although Basic English 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. More recently, it has influenced the creation of Simplified English, a standardized version of English intended for the writing of technical manuals.

Rules of grammar

Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allow 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 not used as verbs, like "I change," "we will turn right," or "you use." They are used as nouns, like "make a change," "take turns," or "make use of," and so on. (This is the key-idea of Basic English.) 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, regarding grammar, words such as grammar or noun might be used, even though they are not on Ogden's wordlist.
11. The letter [X] is not included as it is thought to be the most difficult letter to pronounce.

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 totalitarian world government. In the future world of Wells' vision, virtually all members of humanity know this language.

From 1942 until 1944 George Orwell was a proponent of Basic English, but in 1945 he became critical of universal language. The language later inspired his use of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.^[1] 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.^[2]

Word lists

The 850 core words of Basic English are found in Wiktionary's Appendix:Basic English word list. In addition to this core 850, there are lists used to expand the vocabulary used in any given piece to 1,000 words. This is accomplished by adding a word 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 specialized subset of that general field.

Controversy about Basic English

The areas of controversy about Basic English include criticism of the minimal set of 850 words as too limited. The practice of replacing other words with phrase combinations from the 850 has been seen as teaching bad habits to learners who will someday expand to other words and stop using the unusual phrase combinations that avoided a wider vocabulary.

Limited word lists

The basic 850 words is a small subset of English vocabulary. Compared to an extensive reader's lexicon of perhaps 30,000 words, then the 850 is less than 3% of the total (850/30,000 ~= 2.83%). If a minimal vocabulary were considered as 5,000 words, then the 850 would be 17% of the needed words (850/5000 = 17%). Even compared to the 1300 core words^[3] of Essential World English,^[3] the 850 words would be only about 65% of the needed words (850/1300 ~= 65.4%).

Notable omitted words

Basic English omits hundreds of common words to form the core 850 word list.^[4] The remaining words cover a limited view of the world, such as for a northern European landowner living in a rural area. Some very elementary words are omitted:

• Colours include red, blue, green but not purple, violet, or indigo.
• Pronouns include "I" and "he" but omit many others: she, her, they, them, we, us, him or it are excluded.
• There are no words for verb forms with would, could or should.
• There are no words for automobile, car or truck, but transport includes cart, carriage, horse, train, boat or ship.
• The animals include the north European barnyard, with horse, cow, pig, sheep, dog, cat or rat, but Asian/African or American animals are excluded, as camel, elephant, zebra, gnu, lion, tiger, buffalo, deer or llama are not included.
• There are no words for mop, pail, scrub, sweep, or broom, but there are servant, secretary, and cook (although no "slave") along with: clean and wash.
• Words for food are limited to meat, fish, salt, fruit, apple, orange, potato, soup, cake, egg, milk, bread and butter, with no beef, chicken, seafood, clam, pepper, pie, banana, peach, pear, lemon, lime, tomato, bean, pea, squash, sauce or relish.
• There are no words for shop, buy, sell, purchase or rent; however there are owner, credit, servant, debt, and trade.
• Beyond the words farm, plough, land, earth or sand, there are no words for grow, crop, reap or harvest; however, there are over 18 words of commerce, including business, owner, manager, committee, authority, approval, adjustment, advertisement, agreement, trade, cheap, property, company, industry, competition, government, organization and society.

The included words are considered mandatory for any student of English, but any pronouns for women (she/her) or groups (we/us/they) would need to be included among the particular 150-word list added to total 1,000 words for each specialty. Also, words for numbers (one, two, three, ten, hundred, thousand) are not considered important to learn among the mandatory 850 words.

See also

Other forms of English

• E Prime
• European English
• Globish
• International English
• Plain English
• Simplified English
• Special English
• Newspeak

Other relevant pages

• A General Service List of English Words
• Plain language
• Basic English picture wordlist
• Bible in Basic English
  • Wycliffe Bible Translators
• Number of words in English
• Simple English Wikipedia
• Simplified Chinese

References

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)
• www.basic-english.org(with downloads)
• 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 of Basic English and suggestions for overcoming its problems
• First, Second, Third Person - An alternative formulation to easily recognise third person.

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