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.

Rules of grammar

Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allow people to use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal English way.

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• Words are pluralized by adding an "S" on the end of the word. If there are special ways to make a plural word in English, such as "ES" and "IES", they should be used instead.
• Each of the 300 verbs can be turned into nouns by adding the ending -"ER" or -"ING"; or into adjectives by adding -"ING" and -"ED".
• Adjectives can be turned into adverbs with the ending -"LY".
• For comparatives and superlatives, either "MORE" and "MOST" or -"ER" and -"EST" may be used.
• Adjectives can be inverted with "UN"-.
• Questions are formed by adding "DO" at the beginning.
• Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.
• Combined words can be formed from two nouns (for example "milkman" or "wordend") or from a noun and a direction ("sundown").
• Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock time, and international words are in English forms.
• The wordlist can be augmented by the jargon of an industry or science. For example, in a grammar, words such as "grammar" or "noun" might be used, even though they are not on Ogden's wordlist.