BASIC ENGLISH INSTITUTE
2490 248th Street
Marshalltown, IA, USA 50158
C. K. Ogden’s Basic English Phone: 641: 752-3264
Basic English for 21st Century
James L. Bauer
BS, PE, CFPIM, MA, CDP, CCP
DIRECTOR
"Basic English has two chief purposes:
- To serve as an international auxiliary language; that is to say, a second language for use throughout the world in general communication, commerce, and science.
- To provide a rational introduction to normal English; both as a first step, complete in itself, for those whose national language is not English, and as a grammatical introduction, encouraging clarity of thought and expression, for English-speaking peoples at any stage of proficiency."
- - C. K. OGDEN.
VALUES
International
When educated Koreans and Chinese need to speak, it is in English.
English is the defacto international language. Of-the-educated – only!
Why not make it available to everyone?
Open doors to communication, understanding of all cultures.
To education.
To employment.
Aid to personal trade.
For business and commerce.
For international sports.
For international travel.
For air crews and ships company.
For entertainment: radio, movies, TV. (for good or bad)
To open the Internet.
Opens door to books, magazines, news.
Establish person to person communications, aid, etc.
For Immigrants.
Quickly enter mainstream life.
Painless (comparatively) way to enter mainstream life.
Full communication of your thoughts and needs.
Able to read much English ; all works intended for immigrant.
Local press can be understood without loss to public.
Integration and assimilation.
Government.
“What makes a nation is a common language.”
No translation of public documents (California acknowledges 200 languages)
No separate ballots. Marshalltown Clerk says major expense, to Creative Retirement.
No free (i.e. tax paid) interpreters required in court, voting sites.
Less pamphlet versions yet meet the needs of the community.
Head off Hispanic separation of states, civil war.
Make tax codes understandable.
Reduce school expenses (perhaps be able to fund gifted children)
Media
World Audience for : news, TV, Internet books, magazines. (Movies can dub into languages).
Local Newspapers, radio -- no antagonizing natives or waste of foreign language page.
Urgent news such as weather warning reach everybody.
Public Diplomacy.
“What makes men international will be a common language.”
This is the 8th week we have seen this need and can now address it.
Further the goals of peace, understanding, mediation of differences.
Unemotional language – mostly nouns -
“a building for religion” is not divisive as is/can be synagogue, mosque, temple, church
Leader in religion versus priest, pastor, rabbi, uman, shaman, witch doctor,
This is an example of rich and emotion laden English that can be
simplified with Basic. Vicar, padre, chaplain, monsignor, minister, cleric, monk, nun,
ecclesiastic, clergy, rector, preacher, parson, reverend, holy man, rector, father, curate,
bishop, profit, saint, spiritualist, spiritual adviser, reader, sage, medium, evangelist, deacon, wise man, wizard, evangelist. This exemplifies the unity of mankind.
We could play this game with buildings if we had time.
ALTERNATIVES:
French, the old Lingua Franc?? of the world.
Latin - nay
Esperanto – equal penalty to all.
Klingon – more hobbyists.
Spanish. I tried studying Spanish on the assumption that the educated people of the world spoke English and the uneducated I was likely to meet spoke Spanish. Some validity to this, but we cannot expect the educated to change to the language of the poor, for Oxford becomes Cockney. No, it is better to raise Pygmalion than to lower the leadership.
What If?
What if we had made the decision, world wide to teach Basic in world schools as part of the end of WWII, when Ogden's work was at its peak, and it was actually implemented starting in 1954, then over 80% of the world, everybody under age 55, could today would speak to anyone else in the world in an international auxiliary language with no requirement to change their local language.
ISSUES:
American domination. Many cannot sponsor anything that supports US or western expansion. This is cutting off ones nose to spite the face. English is the world language, Basic allows the masses to participate in the world, raise standard of livings worldwide.
Nationalism. How ridiculous does this get?
GI's introduced the celebration of “The Weekend.” This caused the French government to establish a bureau that changes words of English origin to different words that do not offend Franco sensibilities. I am writing a Basic translation dictionary. Computer is used internationally. So the French changed it to “ordinair”, meaning from an ordinal number.
English is Not the language of the Profit and Mohammad wants all Muslims to learn Arabic to learn his words.
Not based on Frequency of common use. My wife and I learned the top 100 words in Dutch before going to Holland. Worthless. Understood some words but not key words in a sentence. Ogden selected the most necessary words to communicate.
As it happens, the 10 most frequent words in English are the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I. [excluding Ah, and Ya'know.] Among them, they makeup a fourth part of all our reading. Naturally enough, all these words come very early in the teaching of Basic. But they don't come early because they are frequent. They come early because they are necessary, because they do so much work in the English language.
English Speakers will lose the richness of their Language. How silly. Basic English is not intended for use among English-speaking people nor to replace any native language. It an auxiliary language; or, an introduction.
The spread of a common second language does not, of course, by itself mean a more peaceful world. Some of the worst tragedies have been "civil wars".