Basic English

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.

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 said with a few other words, and he worked 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 made the grammar simpler, but tried to keep the grammar 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.

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.

Words are pluralized 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.
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," not "acter."
Some adjectives can be turned into adverbs with the ending -"LY".
For comparatives and superlatives, either "MORE" and "MOST" or -"ER" and -"EST" may be used.
Some adjectives can be inverted with "UN"-.
Yes/No Questions are formed by adding "DO" at the beginning or changing the word order.
Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.
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").
Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock time, and international words are in English forms.
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

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 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.

Word List

These are the 850 core words of Basic English. (See List of Basic English core terms)

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).
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.

English pidgin and creole languages | Forms of English | Constructed languages | Technical communication

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Rules of grammar

Historical references

Word List

See also

External links