Basic English

Basic English, or simple English, is a simplified form of the English language created by Charles Kay Ogden with a greatly reduced vocabulary . The English variant is sometimes referred to as the planned language , as this form of English was once supposed to serve as a world auxiliary language . It should not be confused with Simplified English, which is formally similar, but created for a very special field of application . BASIC is the abbreviation for British American Scientific International Commercial (Language), with reference to the English word basic , which means fundamental .

history

Ogden developed Basic English with IA Richards in the 1920s when he was analyzing the vocabulary of English: he found that the vocabulary of English was much simpler than that of French or Latin . Richards then also used Basic English to teach English.

The aim of spreading English that is easy to learn found the support of high officials of the British Empire : in the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office or - since its establishment in 1931 - the British Commonwealth of Nations and their subordinate institutions. In 1961, a year after the United Kingdom granted most of its African colonies independence, the Anglo-American Conference on English Teaching Abroad met in Cambridge. At the conference it was u. a. to the question of whether there is any fear that English will lose its influence in the young states. IA Richards, who had been invited to give the opening lecture, expressed his conviction that English would continue to be a "vehicle ... for all of evolving humanity." He pointed out that the spiritual world of an English learner from an “undeveloped country” would be “restructured” as a result.

structure

Basic English only has 850 words, with many terms being made up of multiple words. According to Ogden, Basic English can be learned in seven weeks, while Esperanto can be learned in seven months and actual English in seven years. According to Ogden, with the 850 words, everything that can be expressed in ordinary English can also be said in Basic English. The German-language standard work on learning the language, written under the guidance of Ogden himself, is based on 40 teaching hours. With two hours a week it is not quite the workload for half a year of lessons.

This is essentially achieved by restricting the use of a few verbs, a procedure that only works in English. In any case, linguistics argues about what a word is. For example, Ogden and Richards count the forms I, we and be, am, is, are, were and a number of others as just one word each. A number of words, such as the numbers or the names of the months , are treated as special vocabulary and are not included in the 850 words.

Basic English, according to Ogden and Richards, is a planned language, a teaching method for teaching English, and a means of thinking . For the first two goals, precisely documented methods have been developed under her guidance and are sufficiently fully available in German; this is not the case in other European languages.

criticism

Ogdens and Richards' Basic English has been hotly contested as a result. What the authors consider to be a particular advantage of planned language, namely that it is part of a natural language, turns out to be a particular disadvantage in the criticism:

Ogden kept the very irregular spelling of English, and the pronunciation is just as unstandardized as is the case with the various forms of English.
Today, Basic English essentially serves as an introduction to actual English and thus misses one of the goals of world aid languages, namely to promote a more neutral and simple form of language for communication among all people without unjustifiably preferring a language community.
An association for the teaching of English, the British Council , also owns the rights to the language.
Basic English has proven itself as a teaching method, but it was officially declared as early as the 1940s that it is only one of many teaching methods.

Aftermath

The testing of Basic English was able to provide solid evidence that people are able to express what they think with surprisingly few words. According to Ogden and Richards, only 600 words are enough to express anything you want to say in English, but in their own words this makes a pidgin . Basic English initiated research into the development of a basic vocabulary in other languages too, such as French (see Français fondamental ).

Basic English as a teaching method

The statement that the pronunciation is not standardized because of the retained spelling of English is based on ignorance. On the contrary, the restriction of the vocabulary enables a number of simplified rules, e.g. for emphasis, which make learning easier.

Using it as a teaching method requires a lot of practice on the part of the teacher, as it is by no means easy to limit yourself to the given vocabulary afterwards.

Many works of literature have been translated into Basic English as examples, especially the Bible , so that there is a lot of teaching material.

Other sub-languages

The concept of the free internet encyclopedia Simple-English-Wikipedia is also based on Basic English . Simplified choice of words and grammar are only guidelines and not standardized; This means that Simple English is not a planned language according to the strict definition.

Text example: Genesis in Basic English

1: 1 At the first day God made the heaven and the earth.

1: 2 And the earth was waste and without form; and it was dark on the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the waters.

1: 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1: 4 And God, looking on the light, saw that it was good: and God made a division between the light and the dark,

1: 5 Naming the light, day, and the dark, night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

1: 6 And God said, Let there be a solid arch stretching over the waters, parting the waters from the waters.

1: 7 And God made the arch for a division between the waters which were under the arch and those which were over it: and it was so.

1: 8 And God gave the arch the name of Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

1: 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven come together in one place, and let the dry land be seen: and it was so.

1:10 And God gave the dry land the name of Earth; and the waters together in their place were named Seas: and God saw that it was good.

1:11 And God said, Let grass come up on the earth, and plants producing seed, and fruit-trees giving fruit, in which is their seed, after their sort: and it was so.

1:12 And grass came up on the earth, and every plant producing seed of its sort, and every tree producing fruit, in which is its seed, of its sort: and God saw that it was good.

1:13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the arch of heaven, for a division between the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for marking the changes of the year, and for days and for years:

1:15 And let them be for lights in the arch of heaven to give light on the earth: and it was so.

1:16 And God made the two great lights: the greater light to be the ruler of the day, and the smaller light to be the ruler of the night: and he made the stars.

1:17 And God put them in the arch of heaven, to give light on the earth;

1:18 To have rule over the day and the night, and for a division between the light and the dark: and God saw that it was good.

Four English Bible translations are available on the Bibleserver website for a text comparison.

Footnotes

^ Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-437146-8 , therein the chapters The colonial linguistic inheritance , pp. 109-135 and British and American promotion of English , pp. 136-172, on Basic English and Ivor Armstrong Richards especially pp. 137 and 165-170.
^ Anglo-American Conference on English Teaching Abroad, Jesus College Cambridge, June 26th to 30th, 1961. Report . The British Council, London 1961.
^ Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 167.
^ Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 165: "If and when a new language becomes really operant in an undeveloped country, the students' world becomes restructured."

Web links

Wikipedia in Simple English

Wiktionary: List of 850 words - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

[1] Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-437146-8 , therein the chapters The colonial linguistic inheritance , pp. 109-135 and British and American promotion of English , pp. 136-172, on Basic English and Ivor Armstrong Richards especially pp. 137 and 165-170.

[2] Anglo-American Conference on English Teaching Abroad, Jesus College Cambridge, June 26th to 30th, 1961. Report . The British Council, London 1961.

[3] Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 167.

[4] Robert Phillipson: Linguistic imperialism . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 165: "If and when a new language becomes really operant in an undeveloped country, the students' world becomes restructured."