Basic English

Not to be confused with Simple English.
Basic English
Created byCharles Kay Ogden
Date1925
Setting and usagecontrolled natural language
Purpose
Constructed language
  • Basic English
Latin (English alphabet)
Unified English Braille
SourcesModern English
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
IETFen-basiceng

Basic English (a backronym for British American Scientific International and Commercial English)[1] is a controlled language based on standard English, but with a greatly simplified vocabulary and grammar. It was created by the 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 1930 book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar.

The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards of Harvard University and Charles Kay Ogden of the University of Cambridge in England. The design of Basic English drew heavily on the semiotic theory put forward by Ogden and Richards in their 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning.[2]

Ogden's Basic, and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Allied victory in World War II as a means for world peace. He was convinced that the world needed to gradually eradicate minority languages and use as much as possible only one: English, in either a simple or complete form.[3]

Although Basic English was not built into a program, similar simplifications have been devised for various international uses. Richards promoted its use in schools in China.[4] It has influenced the creation of Voice of America's Learning English for news broadcasting, and Simplified Technical English, another English-based controlled language designed to write technical manuals.

What survives 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.[5]

  1. ^ Ogden, Charles Kay (1932). Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company, Limited. p. 21.
  2. ^ McElvenny, James (2015-10-22). "The application of C.K. Ogden's semiotics in Basic English" (PDF). Language Problems and Language Planning. 39 (2): 187–204. doi:10.1075/lplp.39.2.05mce. ISSN 0272-2690. S2CID 148343056.
  3. ^ Ogden, Charles Kay (1934). The System of Basic English. Harcourt, Brace.
  4. ^ "Education: Globalingo". Time. 31 December 1945. Archived from the original on 14 November 2011.
  5. ^ Weiss, Edmond H. (2005). The Elements of International English Style. M. E. Sharpe. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-0-7656-1572-5.