BASIC ENGLISH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1935, Page 6

BASIC ENGLISH

INTEBNATIONAL TONGUE

LESS THAW A THOUSAND WORDS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 15. It is hard to believe that 850 chosen English words are enough to express all ordinary thoughts. With these chosen words one may even write a book. The general public have not hitherto been informed of the work that has been going on to select an English vocabulary which might easily form the basis of an international language, but the revelation is now made. ' It is possible (says a special correspondent of "The Times") to have a working selection of "right" words which will do almost everything which is needed; And it is possible, further, to have a group of rules with the help of which the right words may be put in the right places. A list of English words which have the power of covering the greater part of the range of man's interests has been worked out by Mr. C. K. Ogden, of the Ortholosgical Institute at Cambridge; and these, together with certain rules, make up Basic English: a complete system in which only 850 words are necessary, and which has been, and is being, used for books on a wide range of questions. THIRTY HOURS' STUDY. Most learners take at least four years to get a working knowledge of normal' English, and the great question with which teachers have been faced has been to get a system which will take less time. Here "Basic" English is important; in its 850 words anything may be said for all the purposes of everyday existence. The learning of these Basic words takes .30 hours. Two hours' work every day a month makes it possible for anyone to get a more or less complete knowledge of the system. After 50 hours' work a nightschool group in Copenhagen went "on the air" from Radiox Kalundborg last year with the approval of Danish education authorities. With a bad teacher, or in the East, where the sounds give more trouble, a longer training would probably be needed. CLEAR TO EVERYONE. Basic (British-American-Scientific-In-ternational-Commercial) English \ is, however, something more than a list of 850 words. It is a system, for saying things simply and clearly, and'at the same time getting free from the unnecessarily complex rules of the old "Grammar." Only 18 of the words are "verb"-forms, which not only makes what is normally the hardest part of the learner's work—the complex structure and changing forms of the "verb" —unnecessary, but gives him a range far greater than would be possible with so small a word-list under any other conditions. ,';But putting together the names of, simple operations, such as get, give, come, go, put, .take, with the words for directions, like in, over, through, a'hd the rest, 2000 or 3000 complex ideas—like insert, which becomes put in—are made of his store. In this way the 850 words may be made to do the work of" 20,000. The Basic forms of statement are clear to ■ everyone. . .•''■' The Orthological Institute. has been, working on new lines, and-the value,''of Basic English as.ran international language has ■how be tested by ex-1 p'erts in the different fields. That itvis a serious working system, offering great hopes for the future, is clear from the fact that noted- men pf letters arid

science in a number of countries have put their names to a statement giving it their approval. It may here be stated that the four preceding paragraphs of this article are written in Basic English. APPLICATION ABROAD. In Japan a Japanese-Basic English dictionary has just been completed as.; part of research work done by the Orthological Institute with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. In Soviet Russia the Government is bringing out next month special editions of five of the Basic English books —"The A B C of Basic English," "Black Beauty," "Tales from Tolstoy." "Gulliver in Liliput," and "Robinson Crusoe" —for general teaching use in schools.

In China new international headquarters for basic English has been opened at Peiping, and Dr. Y. R. Chao, a linguistic expert, has completed the ( preliminary work for a system of basic Chinese on the same lines as basic English. In the Leeward Islands basic English is being used for teaching in the schools, one of its 850 words being adopted each day as the "word of the day." In England itself books have been written in basic English without readers being aware of it. "Twentieth-Cen-tury Houses," an illustrated architectural work by Mr.' Raymond McGrath, is a noteworthy example which won high praise in both the architectural and literary Press and which showed that'even on a somewhat specialised subject the author was able to write from among only 850 different words a book of 80,000 words.