Talk:Basic English

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[edit] Meta

The part that's supposedly written in Basic English uses the words "adjust" and "grammar", which are forbidden. --AxelBoldt

You forgot the number 10 rule: '10. Use the words of an industry or science. For example, in this grammar, some special words are for teaching languages, and not part of Basic English: grammar, plural, conjugate, noun, adjective, adverb, qualifier, operator, pronoun, and directive. Further, "adjustment" *is* in the list. I'm not clear enough on Basic English to know whether that makes the verb form "adjust" fair game, or if you have to go to "had adjustments made on them". Brion VIBBER

It occurs to me that since the most important feature of Basic English is adherance to the 850 words, it would be easy to write a Web page (or a computer program, etc.) to test a given text for compliance and even help the writer to edit it by highlighting the incorrect words. It's too bad that Basic English does not seem to have caught on anywhere that I know of. David 10:36 Aug 3, 2002 (PDT)

That's not a half-bad idea! Actually, this could probably be accomplished pretty easily using any syntax-highlighting text editor: define a new style where the 850 words and their standard inflections are listed as keywords, and anything else will stand out in a different color. --Brion VIBBER (neat! David)

This article has one sentence of introducation before it launches into criticisms of basic English. Could someone improve the introductory paragraph to give more background? Dduck 13:56, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Anyone else notice the fact that this "simple english" is reminiscant of newspeak? --cuiusquemodi 19:54, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, and this is discussed in the article under Historical references. -- Toby Bartels 20:30, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

--- Can the article itself be linked to a version in Basic English (for comparison purposes)?

The difference between Basic English (and Simple English), and Newspeak is that the former provides a starting point for full English, and the latter is a closed (and reducing) system.

Looking at the article history, I see that single words are added to the base vocabulary ("lovely", "whom") by people who did not log in. Currently the 850 words is 851. Could someone verify the base vocabulary and correct this? --Mozai 18:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems like the introduction missed 2 key points about Basic English 1.) that the 850 words selected were those that are selected to be those words from a person's total experience needed for communication. And 2.) that as such Ogden made a significant contribution to linguistics. Simplified English owes a debt to him.Jbottoms76 18:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Simple English and cultural imperialism

Perhaps the counter argument to this point, mentioned in the text, would be to develop "Simple (other languages)."

Might be an interesting challenge (g).

[edit] Basic vs. simple English

The link at the bottom of the article leads to Wikipedia in "simple" English (English without big words), not Basic English (an artificial language invented by Charles Kay Ogden). I deleted the link but I'm open to discussion on this. Dyfsunctional 03:32, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Just because they aren't the same exact thing doesn't mean the link shouldn't be there... After all, there is a "See also" section which is about related subjects. It makes sense to link to the Simple English Wikipedia because it's related to the subject of the article. It's likely that a person who's reading about a synthetically simplified version of the English language on the English Wikipedia will be interested in knowing there is another Wikipedia in simpler English (and they may not notice the "in other languages" area). Michael Sappir 10:05, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I too was surprised to find no link to the Simple English Wikipedia, for the reasons stated above, so have attempted to reinstate this, albeit inelegantly. Please wikify it if you know how. BrainyBabe 15:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be very useful to show in this article what the difference between Basic English and Simple English (used in its Wiki). I don't understand. --Koryakov Yuri 21:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wording

Basic English is a simplified English language

"is a simplified English language" (emphasis mine)--is this phrase correct English usage? --Dpr 05:18, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree that "a simplified English language" is awkward at best (besides which, I'm only aware of one English language!). I made some small edits to fix this, plus I added a Constructed language link. 161.11.130.249 18:28, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism and Rebuttal

The faux arguement in the second section is completely one-sided. It seems to be an attempt to discredit the criticism (whether deserved or not.) Could someone perhaps write a more balanced representation of the "controversy"? I can't, because I think Basic English is anglocentric crap. And I'm no expert anyway. Anonymous

the arguments need to be sourced so they can be sorted out. Bob A 17:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I went back through the history, (yes, I know, I need a life ;-)) and I found out who it was who originally wrote the disputed arguments. They made four contributions, all to this article, and all in april of 2005. Unless someone else is willing to defend them, I see no reason to keep them, especially if they are viewed as wrong.TrogdorPolitiks 20:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that a small amount information in the "Criticisms" section should be saved; for example, I found that the discussion about how "world" can be rendered in different ways served as a useful example of the language in action. Perhaps this example could be worked in after the clause "Ogden did not put words into Basic English that could be said with a few other words" in the first section, or perhaps someone more familiar with Basic English could create a section of examples. The rest of the "Criticisms" section is clearly not NPOV, and I don't think it provides any useful information. I think the section should be deleted, and the relevant information it contains (minimal though this may be) should be moved elsewhere in the article. --Babcockd 09:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Also criticism/response is very poor style for an encyc. And it reads like a Q&A from an introduction to Basic English pamphlet. I say kill it and re-introduce when someone has some real criticism. Ashmoo 06:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Examples!

Someone who knows Basic English or has access to some texts needs to add several examples to this article, with English translations. I think the article is necessarily incomplete without them. Torgo 06:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Just about the existing examples, the picture is labeled "FDR to Churchill", but the image is called "Churchill to FDR". Which is it???

[edit] Conjugate --> Decline

In Rule 7 that explains the grammar of Simple English, it states that the operators and pronouns "conjugate." Isn't a better word decline? I am not familar with Simple English, so I'm not going to make the change myself in case there is a specific reason why conjugate makes more sense. I mention this possible error because it appears to be in a fundamental section of the article.--El aprendelenguas 23:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Does basic English use the same spellings as British or American English?Cameron Nedland 12:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the spelling issue

Concerning the spelling: There seems to be uncertainty whether Ogden used British or American spelling in his original list. Some lists of the 850 words that can be found on the internet use American English [1] [2], others use British spelling [3] [4]. On the Simple Wikipedia, there was a dispute about this issue. The so-called "Basic English Institute" (www.basic-english.org) only uses American spelling. But this is not surprising, as the website is based in the US. Some people argue that "Basic English" is officially spelt in American English, but I doubted that, because after all, Ogden was from England...

So I did some research in a university library and consulted the original publications, in which Ogden introduced his list of words and his system of "Basic English". The three books are: Basic English (1930), The ABC of Basic English (1932) and The Basic Words (1932, a kind of dictionary with detailed definitions and examples), published by Paul Treber & Co., Ltd.

The answer to the question what kind of spelling is used: consistently British, in all three books. I also noticed that no 'variant spellings' are presented. (On www.basic-english.org, there are two variant spellings included in the word list: plough for plow and grey/gray.)

For the words in the 850-word-list, where two variants exist, Ogden uses the following:

  • BEHAVIOUR
  • COLOUR
  • HARBOUR
  • HUMOUR
  • PLOUGH
  • GREY
  • ORGANIZATION

Note that organization is used, not "organisation" (the more common variant in British English nowadays). Ogden does not list any variant spellings. As far as the "international words" are concerned: He provides a preliminary list, the spelling is consistently British (e.g. encyclopaedia, theatre). He says the list should be expanded with time. In "The ABC of Basic English", there is a very nice chart with all the 850 words, grouped into categories. A very exact HTML representation of this chart can be found at [5].

Organisation could be spelt witha z in British English, sicne it depends on the root of the word which is more correct. Sir Ernest Gowers, in his work The complete Plain Words explaines this more fully, but unfortunately I do not have a copy to hand to provide the details of his argument. Basically, the use of S in all cases is considered by him to be a reaction against the use of Z in cases where it is innapropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.101.102.188 (talk) 02:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

So why does the "Basic English Institute" use American spelling and doesn't even mention that the original list as created by Ogden uses British spelling? Probably because the institute is US-based and focuses on a US readership. But they should (IMHO) mention that their "spelling standard" deviates from Ogden's original list...

There is also another publication "Basic English: international second language", published in New York for the American market (to promote Basic English there). It was published more than thirty years later (in 1968) than Ogden's "Basic English" trilogy. I've had a look at it as well, and in a footnote, the editor says that in this book the spellings were changed to the American form. The editor also mentions that Ogden like the idea of spelling reform. However, at the beginning of the book, there is the same chart as in the original "The ABC of Basic English" with British spellings. Dumbledore 15:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "operator" and "become" nonsense

Combined words can be formed from two operators (for example "become")

Please correct this nonsense example with a correct one and one that explains what "operator" is supposed to mean here. The prefix "be-" (like in bespatter) has nothing to do with the verb "be"! And while you're at it, you might want to do the same at simple:Basic_English --Espoo 12:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heinlein's "Gulf"

The language used in Heinlein's science fiction story "Gulf" is very much like John Quejada's Ithkuil (q.v.). It is in no way like Basic English.

stevo

I concur "Speedtalk" in "Gulf" is in no way like Basic English. He references Basic in several stories set in space, used by non-first language speakers. Also note that Ithkuil postdates "Gulf" by three decades, and the website credits the story as an influence. 209.43.10.224 01:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)Mike Williamson

[edit] Basic Naming

I see that "Franklin Roosevelt" joined Churchill in supporting BE; whereas "Franklin Delano Roosevelt" was a "critic" of the idea, and even made a little joke about it. Yet more evidence of the need for simplified personal names, to reduce ambiguity!205.212.73.217 08:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)