Basic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created (in essence as a simplified subset of English) by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language. It was presented in Ogden's book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). Capitalised, BASIC is sometimes taken as an acronym that stands for British American Scientific International Commercial.[1]
Ogden's Basic, and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Allied victory in the Second World War as a means for world peace. 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.[2] More recently, it has influenced the creation of Voice of America's Special English for news broadcasting, and Simplified English, another English-based controlled language designed to write technical manuals.
What survives today 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.[3]
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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 paraphrasis. 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.[4]
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).[5]
The 850 core words of Basic English are found in Wiktionary's Appendix: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 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 specialised subset of that general field, to make a basic 1000-word vocabulary for everyday work and life.
Moreover, Ogden assumed that any student already should be familiar with (and thus may only review) a core subset of around 350 "international" words.[6] Therefore, a first-level student should graduate with a core vocabulary of around 1350 words. A realistic general core vocabulary could contain 1500 words (the core 850 words, plus 350 international words, and 300 words for the general fields of trade, economics, and science). A sample 1500-word vocabulary is included in the Simple English Wikipedia.
Ogden provided lists to extend the general 1500-word vocabulary to make a 2000-word list, enough for a "standard" English level.[7][8] This 2000-word vocabulary represents "what any learner should know". At this level students could start to move on their own.
Also see Basic English ordered wordlist from Simple English Wikipedia.
The word use of Basic English is similar to full English, but the rules are much simpler, and there are fewer exceptions. Not all meanings of each word are allowed.
Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English help people use the 850 words to talk about things and events in a normal way.[9]
Like all international auxiliary languages (or IALs), Basic English may be criticised as unavoidably based on personal preferences, and thus, paradoxically, inherently divisive.[10] Moreover, like all natural language based IALs, Basic is subject to criticism as unfairly biased towards the native speaker community.[11]
As a teaching aid for English as a Second Language, Basic English has been criticised for the choice of the core vocabulary and for its grammatical constraints.[12]
In 1944, readability expert Rudolf Flesch published an article in Harper's Magazine, "How Basic is Basic English?" in which he claimed, "It's not basic, and it's not English." The basic complaint was that the vocabulary is too restricted, and, as a result, the text ends up being awkward and more difficult than necessary. He also notes that the words in the Basic vocabulary were arbitrarily selected, and there have been no empirical studies showing that it makes language simpler.[13]
In the novel 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 to 1944 George Orwell was a proponent of Basic English, but in 1945 he became critical of universal languages. Basic English later inspired his use of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[14]
In his story "Gulf", science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein used a constructed language, in which every Basic English word is replaced with a single phoneme, as an appropriate means of communication for a race of genius supermen.[15]
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