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.

Criticisms, misunderstandings and answers

One criticism of Basic English is that in order to reduce word count, it uses large numbers of idiomatic expressions which are non-obvious to non-native English speakers. For example the term "make good" is used for "succeed" while the term "make bad" is not used for "fail".

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Answer: "Make good" is not necessary in Basic English. Ogden gives a suggestion to make use of "do well". For "fail" it will be enough to make use of "don't do well" or "doesn't do well".

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Criticism: English relies heavily on idioms, of which there are about 4000 presently recognized by most idiom dictionaries - requiring nearly 2000 words, more than twice the vocabulary of Basic English, to define. A counter-argument is that English speakers will eventually need to learn this larger vocabulary, and the idioms, at some point, so little or no harm is done by introducing asymmetric idioms early on.

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Answer: Basic English, in fact, makes little use of idioms. Any sense of the word or word groups are kept within the limit of expansion from the root sense.

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Criticism: Note also that the size of the word list also eliminates a considerable number of common English words, such as "world".

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Answer: Words like "world", however common and frequent, are not on the list, because they are not truly necessary. Other words like "earth", "space", or "International society" will do the work.

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Another criticism is that it is a form of linguistic imperialism, because it attempts to make English, and by extension, Anglophone cultures, into the default international culture. It also preserves other irregularities of the English language in the interest of backward compatibility.

Related Topics:
Linguistic imperialism - Backward compatibility

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Answer: Basic English does not put a special weight on being British or English. "Home", for example, is not on the list. By limiting, in addition, the number of "verbs" as much as possible, it makes the word changes far more regular than "regular" English.

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One other criticism is that it is not as effective as E-Prime at enabling non-judgemental communication, since "to be" is permitted but other words required to indicate states of being (e.g. "equals", "become") are not.

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Answer: Basic English does make use of words like "become" by joining "be" and "come". "Equal" is used as an adjective, or a quality word. So it is possible to make a statement like "This is equal to that." A non-judgemental statement is made using "seem".

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