Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

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Salmoneus
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Re: Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

Post by Salmoneus »

Wikipedia didn't go about making it. It was made by a Mr. Ogden in the early 1930s. "Secretary" is a word because anyone who is anyone will only ever converse with people who own their own secretary. "Toilet" is not a word, because nobody who is anybody ever talks about, or indeed ever uses, such barbaric contraptions, as anyone who is anyone will have overcome such unmentionable biological impulses.

This is why words like "office", "order", "organisation", "account", "engine", "distribution", "competition", "apparatus", "camera", "chemical", "umbrella" and "advertisement" are all included, because these are essential elements of civilised life in any culture in the world, whereas disgusting and irrelevant words like "period", "menstrual", "pregnant", "vagina", "suckle"/"breastfeed", "diaper" and "wash" are not included, because no civilised man would ever have a need to use words like that.
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Re: Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

Post by Khemehekis »

Salmoneus wrote: 29 Dec 2019 19:06 whereas disgusting and irrelevant words like "period", "menstrual", "pregnant", "vagina", "suckle"/"breastfeed", "diaper" and "wash" are not included, because no civilised man would ever have a need to use words like that.
Fun fact: "Wash" is not on the list because Basic English includes only 18 verbs. Even though verbs are the backbone of language, Ogden thought he could whittle them down to a bare minimum because they're so hard to learn to conjugate. This leads to absurdities like "smash" being classified as a noun in Basic English.
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Salmoneus
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Re: Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

Post by Salmoneus »

That's irrelevant, though, as you point out yourself. It doesn't matter if something's a "noun" or a "verb" - that's just a grammatical feature of the language, and in English it's easy to say "have a smash with" or "give a wash to" or whatever.

I guess Ogden would allow "make clean", but even so...
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Re: Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

Salmoneus wrote: 29 Dec 2019 19:06 [...] irrelevant words like "period", "menstrual", "pregnant", "vagina", "suckle"/"breastfeed", "diaper" and "wash" are not included, because no civilised man would ever have a need to use words like that.
Here is how you would say these in Basic English
  • woman does a blood every month
  • in the way woman does a blood every month
  • little hole for baby to come out
  • woman give milk to baby
  • a bag that is put on the baby so the waste does not go to every place
  • to get the water or other thing of making clean and put this on the body of you so that dirty things are made to get off
(I would make an example sentence out of these but it wouldn't be a very nice one.)

To be honest I think that the fact it completely lacks numbers other than "second" would be more inconvenient, second-language speakers would tend to use numbers shortly after or possibly even before discussing gynaecology.

How to count in Basic English:
1. a
2. second a
3. second a and a other
4. second a and a other with a addition
5. second a and a other with a addition and a other addition
6. quite not little*
7. quite not little and a other
8. not little at all
9. not little at all and a other
10. rhythm
11. expansion
12. bucket

*you can't say "big" or "large"
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Re: Ogden's "Basic English" for other languages?

Post by dva_arla »

Birdlang wrote: 28 Dec 2019 22:50 I’d be interested in something like this for Indonesian! I’m learning Indonesian (since I love Indonesian music).
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