Basic English
Basic English is the designed language written by Charles Kay Ogden. The idea of Basic English is to use easy, everyday words to explain more complex thoughts.
Basic English ("British American Scientific International Commercial") includes 850 of ase basic words. Of the 850 words, 600 are nouns, or names of things. Most of ase can be learned using pictures. 150 are adjectives and adverbs, or descriptive words. The last 100 words are some verbs and conjunctions. Verbs and conjunctions are words that help put sentences together.
Rules of word use
editThe word use of Basic English is like full English, but the rules are much more simple, and are are fewer exceptions. Not all meanings of each word are allowed.
Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English help people use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal way.
- Make plurals with an "S" on the end of the word. If are are special ways to make the plural word, such as "ES" and "IES", use am.
- There are four word endings to change each of the 600 nouns: -"ER" and -"ING", and the two adjective word endings, -"ING" and -"ED".
- Make qualifiers from adverbs by adding -"LY".
- Talk about amounts with "MORE" and "MOST." Use and know -"ER" and -"EST."
- Make opposite adjectives with "UN"-
- Make questions with opposite word order, and "DO".
- Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.
- Make combined words from two nouns (for example "milkman") or the noun and the directive (sundown).
- Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock time, and international words are in English forms.
- Use the words of an industry or science. For example, in this grammar, some special words are for teaching languages, and not part of Basic English: grammar, plural, conjugate, noun, adjective, adverb, qualifier, operator, pronoun, and directive.
References
edit- Ogden, C. K. (1940). General Basic English Dictionary. London: Evans Brothers Limited. ISBN 0874713625.
See also
edit- "BE 850" - Basic English 850 word list
- Basic English alphabetical wordlist
- Basic English ordered wordlist
- Basic English picture wordlist - 200 Picturable words
- Basic English international wordlist
- Basic English compound wordlist
- "BE 1500" - Basic English combined wordlist
- Related resources