INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 196, 21 August 1935, Page 16

INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

WILL basic English, by means of which Mr C. K. Ogden, of Cambridge has reduced the elemental words of the language to the meagre number of 850, ultimately become the conventional method of international communication? asks the Boston ‘'Monitor.”

This possibility looms distinctly brighter as tho result of recent developments, for basic English seems to be making great headway. A JapaneseBasic English dictionary has just been completed; basic English is furnishing a model for basic Chinese; the Soviet Government is issuing basic English text books; and in tho Leeward Islands basic English is being taught in the schools. Sooner or later it is expected that basic English will be adopted by the screen, 'which, of course, is particularly anxious to use a language that can bo universally comprehended. It may bo thought that 850 words is a vocabulary incapable of narrating a whole drama, but this is not so. Not long ago a book of 80,000 words was written in basic English without anyone noticing any difference from an ordinary book.

Basic English of 850 Words

Nevertheless, some people have misgivings. If basic English achieves the international currency noped for, and especially if it is adopted by the films, will it tend to restrict tho vocabulary of the English-speaking peoples themselves, causing the 850 words which it contains to bo the only ones out of the 400,000 in the dictionaries to be employed in practical daily use? How severe a restriction of the present vocabularies this would represent may be gauged from the estimate that today a British tea-shop waitress uses about 7000 different words. But on the whole it is likely that these fearg are groundless. Basic English is not in any sense “pidgin” English. It makes its users carefully examine the exact shade of meaning of each of the terms they employ; and this is the first step toward good English. Moreover, the 850 words of basic English are only a foundation; the superstructure of a larger vocabulary can easily be built upon them. If basic English fulfils its international functions properly, its national effects ar6 not likely to bo undesirable.