Science,Business

BASIC ENGLISH: International Second Language
Section One, Part Two - pp 76-95

7 . Basic for Science

Little more than a hundred years back, one man might have been able to make himself an expert in almost every branch of science. There are some now living whose fathers were friends of the man who made the discovery of 0₂ (Oxygen), and who were themselves at school when Darwin was writing The Origin of Species. While they were young, the first books on science were making their way to the East, and only yesterday were the new developments which have been changing the face of the earth taken seriously by the millions of China and Japan. -76- Today Biology has to take into account the work of Sir Jagadio Bose, but if equally important observations were now being recorded in Chinese or Japanese it might be a long time before they got attention. In certain fields new ideas are more or less readily exchanged through international ' Abstracts,' but these short accounts are frequently not very clear, and for material printed in any but the chief European languages, even Russian, the range covered is not very wide.
There is still no English-Japanese or English-Chinese Dictionary which is of any value for the purposes of science, though hundreds of good brains from China and Japan are being trained in English and American universities. Before long these hundreds will become thousands, working with a curtain of strange signs between them and their friends in other countries. The loss on this side may still be small, but let us keep in mind the other side of the picture.
Readers in the East, in tens of thousands, are interesting themselves in medical questions and the sciences of biology, chemistry, engineering, and so on-whose development, at least in theory, is going forward in Europe at an unparalleled rate. Is the Siamese medical man to get his training in the language of his country or in the languages of science ? If he gives five years to English and then comes to France or Germany, his time will be wasted on another unnecessary list of 20,000 units.
It is frequently said that the East will quickly get tired of its new plaything, but there are no signs of such a change. The same arguments were used in Europe two hundred years back; and it is not surprising that education authorities are turning at this point to Basic, not only for the training of the expert but for giving the general public an account of complex ideas in the simplest possible form.
At a time when public opinion may have increasingly important effects on the future of education, the current view that any newspaper story is good enough for the public may do great damage to the cause of science. With the help of Basic, such accounts may be made simple without becoming bad science. Mr. S. L. Salzedo's A Basic Astronomy is an interesting example of what is being done in this connection; and of the papers in The Outlook of Science and Science and Well-Being, Professor J. B. S. Haldane was even ready to say that in some places his argument was the better for being put into Basic.
In fields such as economics, where everyday questions are frequently under discussion, Basic may be a help to anyone who is troubled by statements such as this (by Sir Josiah Stamp) :

"Narrow dispersions, skewed negatively, signify deliberate human restriction of output. Skewed positively, after the introduction of selection of employees by test or examination, a narrow dispersion indicates a successful system of selection."

This goes into Basic quite simply at the level of the general reader, and, it would seem, without serious loss, as :

"The tendency to a common level of output being more frequent, is a sign that output is being consciously kept inside a certain limit. When the lowest outputs are most frequent and the output of workers not widely different and generally high, after selection of workers by test has come into use, the tendency may be taken as a sign of the efficiency of the system of selection." ⁵⁷

Here only one word from the list of 50 special economics words has been made use of. On the other hand, for material in which no one but the expert is interested, words which are international in all the seven chief languages of science will be used frequently. Then we get accounts of this sort:

"The explanation of the fact that the range of radio waves is shorter by day than by night is based on the absorption of the electro-magnetic waves in the ionosphere. By day the ionization of the air is very strong. The highest degree of ionization in Picture S will be in a much lower position, and the deeper layers have a great power of electric conduction. For this reason the radio waves (those ranging between 200 and 600 meters in wave-length) undergo reflection at lower levels, and would come back to earth if there did not take place in the layers of reflection a great absorption caused by the frequent violent meetings of ions and electrons at such levels. Further, it is clear from the latest investigations of the ' fine structure ' of the ionosphere that there are present in the lower air other layers of electrons and ions by which absorption is effected, and the range of the rays limited. (The level of ionization may be as low as 50 km.) At night the ionization becomes less ; there is no chance of refraction or reflection till very high levels (where the mean free paths are very great), and at these levels the numbers of meetings in a second is very much smaller, so there is much less absorption. This makes possible a much greater range, and that is the explanation of the increased range of radio waves at night." ⁵⁸ -79-

To those working in this field, international words such as ionosphere and ionization are necessarily clear. For others there will be the Dictionary⁵⁹ of 10,000 science words whose senses are given in Basic; and whatever is designed for the wider public will make no use of any words outside the Basic 850 other than the simplest internationals. Notes may give the sense of a new word here and there to make the reading smoother, but no special knowledge is needed to get this sense fully. The level of such writing may be judged from Professor Haldane's discussion, in Basic, of the future behavior of the moon.

"In the last four or five million years the moon quickly came nearer to the earth. When it was clear that the end would not be long in coming we got news that the use of sea-power had in a great degree been given up, and wind and other forms of power were used in place of it. But the earthmen were not certain that the smashing up of the moon would necessarily be their destruction, and the turning-motion of the earth-moon system was still used for getting some power. In the year 36,000,000 the moon was only a fifth of the distance it had been from the earth at the start of history. It seemed twenty-five times the size of the sun, and made the sea-level 200 metres higher about four times a year. The effects of the force of the earth's attraction on it might now be seen. Great landslips were seen in the mountains of the moon, and cracks were sometimes formed on its face. Earth-shocks became more frequent on the earth.
At last there were signs that the moon was getting broken up. It was so near to the earth that about l/10th of the sky was covered when the first bits of stone came off its face. The part nearest to the earth, which was very much cracked before, now came away bit by bit in the form of great stones up to a kilometre across, which went round the earth separately. For about a thousand years this process slowly went on, and at last no further interest was taken in it on the earth. The end came quite suddenly. It was watched from Venus, but details about the earlier stages were sent from the earth in addition. The hollow part in the side of the moon facing the earth was suddenly cracked open and there came out of it a current of liquid stone at white heat. When the moon went round the earth, the heat in the middle band of the earth was increased to such a degree that all the rivers and stretches of water became dry and no plants were able to go on living." ⁶⁰

The great need now is for Committees to be formed by those responsible for the organization of science in different countries, so that workers in every branch may be in no doubt as to which words are international. Signs of all sorts are becoming more and more necessary and are getting a wider distribution every year; so a new form of picture language is taking the place of words for a great number of purposes.⁶¹ Science has its international signs in chemistry, where the structure of a substance is pictured by letters and numbers without any words. Basic puts such systems of words, letters, numbers, or signs into operation, and the more of them there are the quicker the Babel of the experts will come to an end and the mind be free to get on with the work mapped out for it by Bacon and Bentham, Euclid and Einstein, Napier and Newton, Orpheus and - Orthology. -80- In Basic for Science there is a full account of the language question in science, and the history of attempts so far made to get agreement about the next step. Examples for the general reader and from a number of special fields (physics-chemistry, mathematics-mechanics, geology, biology) are taken from ten of the Basic Science Books, and the senses of the 100 General Science Words are made clear. A first list of science internationals is printed on pages 307-14.⁶²

57 . Basic for Economics, p. 25.
58 . From an 800-word outline in Basic of a ten-page paper on "The Investigation of the Ionosphere through Electra-Magnetic Waves," by Professor Hans Zickendraht of Basle, printed in the Anraales Guábhard-Sévérine, No. 11, 1935.
59 . See pages 389 and 395-97. ED.
60 . B. S. Haldane, The Outlook of Science, pp. 130-31.
61 . International Picture Language, by Otto Neurath (in Basic), 1936.
62 . For an account of the general and special lists for science, and examples of their use, see Section Three, Part Two.

Ogden's account of the language question in science and of Basic as the answer to it is as timely today as when it was penned. Time has only made the need for an international language for science greater and clearer. By now, there is almost no country where science is not a part of higher education, and where its most surprising uses are not facts of everyday experience. First-rate brains are ready and able everywhere to make their additions to the store of knowledge. But the exchange of ideas, which is so necessary to the development of science, has not become any simpler. It is still necessary for those taking up science to have a knowledge of at least one of the chief European languages, and for such as do not have it as their birthright this is frequently a serious tax on their time and powers. In England, at any rate, it is not very uncommon for learners from the Afro-Asian countries to come for training to our universities and colleges and be unable to get any profit from it because their knowledge of English is not good enough, so that they go back to their countries with broken hopes after a most unhappy experience.

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A further word is needed in connection with Ogden's second example. Les Annales Guébhard-Se't'érine, from which this was taken, was a science paper produced in Neuchâtel in which the writings might be in any one of the four European languages, French, German, Italian, and English. It was, that is to say, an attempt at an ' international ' paper, answering the need for a free exchange of ideas among science workers of different nations. But clearly, a paper limited to those languages would go only a small part of the way, and was, in addition, still dependent on a knowledge of more than one language by its readers. In 1935 Dr. Emil Miihlestein, the producer of Les Annales, had the idea of printing at the end of every paper a short outline of it in Basic English. In this way, anyone with a knowledge of Basic would be able to get a general idea of everything between the covers of the paper, even if he had no knowledge of any of the languages used. Dr. Miihlestein got in touch with the Orthological Institute, which undertook to put such outlines into Basic from any of the languages in question, and the system was put to the test. Supported by the warm approval of readers and writers, it went on regularly up to 1939, when the war made it impossible for Dr. Miihlestein and the Institute to keep in touch. It would be hard to get a better example of the feeling of need for a common language on the part of men of science, on the one hand, and of the value of Basic for the purpose on the other.
After 1944, Basic went on producing science books till in 1953 it had in print sixteen at all levels (see the Book List at the end of this book for some of them), of which two had done so well as to have been put out in paper covers by Penguin Books. In September, 1962, at the Meeting of the British Association at Manchester, two papers were given on (and in) Basic, one on "Basic English as an International Language for Science," the other on "Basic English for the Social Sciences."
Last, in 1965, after more than twenty years, The Science Dictionary in Basic English came out. In the end, the number of words and word-groups covered by it came nearer to 25,000 than to the 10,000 looked forward to by Ogden in 1944. A year later (1968) it was put out in the United States under the name The Basic Dictionary of Science. -ED.

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8 . Basic for Business

Mountains and rivers are chiefly responsible for the early division of men into small warring groups whose expansion, as nations, is effected by crushing other nations. The tendency of every group to make noises in a different way has given the different forms of language by which their thought is limited and their troubles are increased. Language, which might be a uniting force, keeps men separate so that their common interests are still seen through a mist darkly.
What, then, are the uniting forces working for the future and against these unnatural divisions which are natural only in books on geography ? Rivers may be controlled by one or another of the groups living near them, but the sea is still a highway for international trade. Mountains may be the property of nations, but the air is still free -- at any rate for international radio. Radio, like the airplane and the talking picture, is the outcome of science ; and science, though its produce is still being used for destruction, is a help to that international development which will only be possible through a common international language.
English is one of the international languages for trade, which is dependent on peace and common sense for its increase, so Basic as a complete second language for all purposes has a special value for businessmen. But a wide field is covered by the word ' business.' We get no clear picture of a businessman. He might be anything from a bookkeeper to an insurance expert. Makers of goods, bankers, storekeepers, and those responsible for operations on the Exchange are all equally businessmen, though they have little in common but an interest in making money. Most of them, however, are more certain of making money in peacetime than when everything is being turned upside down by the military ; and all of them get more comfort from the thought of themselves on a seat in an office or a club, getting bits of paper signed by the softer part of the public, than on a bed in a hospital having bits of metal taken from the softer parts of their bodies. -83- To the peace-loving sort of businessman common sense says "Sweet are the uses of advertisement. Send letters (with the 850 Basic words on the other side) to business houses in other countries. When new orders are coming in by every post it will be possible to get from you support for inventions which might have had no other chance but self-help. And a new invention is a safer mother for new business than a flag or a gun."
Any branch of business may have 50 special words, in addition to the 850, for its special purposes. There are certain words, such as liability, purchase, and guarantee, which are common to all the branches, but the number of these is very limited. Clearly then, it will be necessary to have separate lists for bankers, insurance men, and so on, in the same way as we have separate lists for zoology, chemistry, and psychology, though they are all sciences.
On the other hand, there is one branch of business which is, in a very great measure, the key to all the rest. The backbone of business is trade. Industry is nothing but an organization for producing goods for the trader ; the chief purpose of insurance is to make the transport of goods a safe undertaking ; and trading operations may have important effects on banks and the money-market.
For these reasons the decision was made that a Business List of the widest and most general use possible would be formed by putting together 50 words from among such necessary words as are common to all the branches of business and the special words which are needed for trading purposes. There is no doubt that this is the field which teachers of 'Business English' have chiefly in mind when writing their books. In Basic for Business sixty Basic examples are given of the sorts of letters which are sent through the post by someone every day. -84- There is more profit to be got from learning examples by heart in connection with business letters than in most other special fields, because in business a small number of conditions and decisions have to be faced again and again, and the forms used have a tendency to become fixed. For this reason it is possible to get a very long way with a rubber-stamp knowledge. That is why the shorthand experts have been able to make a working system based on the use of unit signs for long groups of words, a system which would not be possible if there were a great number of such word-groups in frequent use. It may be pointed out that Basic gives the experts a chance of taking this system even farther than they have been able to do at present, because in Basic the number of different ways in which one statement may be made is much more limited than in normal English, and for this reason the forms of letters will necessarily become more regular.
A reader who has any knowledge of business will see for himself which parts of the examples it will be wisest for him to get into his head. He will do well to give special attention to the words with which the letters are started and ended. Openings might be listed for learning purposes such as "In answer to your letter of the . . . about . . . we have pleasure in saying . . . ," "To our regret we have to say that . . . ", "We are surprised that we are so far without any answer to our letter of the . . ."
A list of endings would have an equal value. Examples which will be of very general use are
"Hoping that you will be pleased with this suggestion, and will send an early answer. "Waiting for the receipt of my order ...," Looking forward to your orders in the future . . . ," "With regrets for the trouble you have been caused. . . ." -85- It is important to get these details right because the purpose and outlook of the sender are frequently judged by the words with which the letter is started or ended. The parting words, "It is our hope that there will be no more trouble about this," make it quite clear that the writer is not pleased, while keeping well inside the limits of good taste ; and an ending such as "Hoping that you will not be greatly troubled by my request." has probably more chance of getting attention for a letter than one worded with less care. It will be noted that ' Yours truly ' is the form used at the end of all Basic business letters as a sign that there is no more to be said. Anyone who gets tired of putting this may make small changes such as ' Yours very truly ' or ' I am yours truly,' but it is our belief that nobody will be very much troubled by the fact that ' respectfully,' ' faithfully,' and ' I have the honor to be ' have been put on one side.
The fact that certain ornaments and additions normally exchanged in letters between businessmen are overlooked by Basic gives equally little cause for regret. Any attempt to put what we have to say more simply and straight forwardly is a step in the right direction. Much good ink and time are wasted in writing about ' an esteemed firm ' or being ' favored by an inquiry.' There is no need for creditors to be ' reluctantly compelled ' to make their requests for payment ; even less is it necessary for someone desiring simple details from another business house to say, before putting his question, "May I trespass on your indulgence in the following matter." Forms such as these are only like the silver paper round the chocolate, and when the chocolate is a bitter one, the silver paper does not make it any sweeter. Basic has quite enough smooth-sounding words to be able to do everything necessary in the way of giving a soft answer or making a delicate request. Here are some suggestions : "We have pleasure in saying . . . ," "Will you be kind enough to . . . ," "To my regret I am unable . . . ," "Kindly let me have...." A long list of this sort might be made ; but the degree to which such forms are necessary is all a question of what one is used to. A Frenchman has more taste for polish than an Englishman ; while in the Far East the ornaments of language seem quite overpowering to most Europeans. If everyone equally is forced by Basic to get to the point as quickly as possible, we may safely say that nobody's feelings will be wounded. -86- From one point of view, then, Basic English will be hard even for the English themselves. The businessman seems to have a strange love for using long words where simple words would do as well and better. In this way there has come into existence a special business language which is not based on business needs or interests, and whose only purpose is to make whatever is under discussion seem more important than it is. A businessman will ' furnish ' details where a normal person would ' give ' them ; he ' renders ' an account when he might equally well ' send it in '; letters are talked of as ' favors ' and payments as ' remittances.' To give a clearer idea of how unnecessarily complex business letters are made in normal English here are some examples of the self-important forms which are frequently used, together with Basic parallels:

We are compelled to have recourse to your services.	We are forced to make our request to you.
It afforded us great pleasure.	It gave us great pleasure
Furnish particulars.	Give details.
I shall esteem it a great favor if you will send.	Will you kindly send.
You may rest assured that.	You may be certain that.
We venture to suggest.	We make the suggestion.

It may be doubted if anyone would seriously say that there is any loss of sense in putting such statements into Basic, and it is to be hoped that the number of those to whom the simple Basic words are more pleasing and more natural to the ear is increasing.
Traders undertake the exchange and transport of all sorts of goods, but naturally the names of a great number of these are not among the general 850 words. The trading operations of most business houses, however, are limited to certain groups of goods -- fruit, cloth, writing materials, and so on -- and wherever this is so it would be very simple to make short lists of the names which are needed in connection with any special group of goods. The question of the general trader is a harder one, and for him some use of word-books will probably be necessary. But if the form and purpose of a letter are clear, the fact that two or three words in it have to be looked up will give no trouble to anyone. -87-

9. Sixteen Years, 1927-1943

Though English might have automatically become the international language, it would not necessarily be the best answer to the question -- What sort of language does its work with the least waste ? It would certainly be a waste of time to make a language international if it was nothing more than the chance outcome of competition for trade and other sidelines of history, or a form of Esperanto based on word-roots with a wide distribution in a number of European languages.
The theory of language is a very complex business. It is dependent on new sciences which have only come into existence in the last hundred years. Thoughts, words, and things are hard enough to keep separate ; and all of them have a tendency to get mixed up with feelings. Five years may be a short time in which to come to a decision about what is what in such a field, but in 1928, when The Meaning of Meaning⁶³ was complete, it was possible to go back to the special field of grammar with some new light on the ways in which words do their work, and from that time to 1927 Basic was in the making. Early in 1928 it became clear that 850 English words, put into operation by the Basic system, would give us something which was supported by science while offering to teachers and businessmen what they had been looking for.
The system was first made public by limited distribution, so that the reaction of the best brains might be tested for two or three years, with a view to forming a group of workers in certain key countries. But interest was everywhere so great that letters and requests for further details kept coming in hundreds, and a wider organization became necessary. With the help of English friends and the Payne Fund of New York, the necessary material was got ready in a number of languages, and in 1933 a serious start was made in the Far East with a program supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Less than seven years after that, Basic had its representatives in more than twenty countries, and interest was everywhere increasing. By the end of 1939 more than 150 books in and about Basic were in print, and the year 1944 will be marked by the addition of more reading material for schools and the printing of the complete Basic Bible by the Cambridge University Press.⁶⁴
Special attention has been given to the needs of the education authorities in China, where the Orthological Institute (Peking), under the direction of Professor R. D. Jameson of Tsmg Hua University and Dr. I. A. Richards of Magdalene College, Cambridge, was working (till 1938) on the organization of material for the Middle Schools. They had the help of a Chinese Committee, and were profiting by the new developments in radio, which is now coming to the front in all countries of the East. The parallel program in Japan would have been complete in 1942, when the Japanese-Basic Dictionary, on which Mr. F. J. Daniels had been at work for five years, was almost ready to be printed for the use of teachers. The place of Professor Okakura, our representative from 1932 till his death in 1936, was taken by Mr. T. Takata, who was responsible for the Japanese form of The ABC of Basic English, and A New Guide to Basic English for Middle Schools.
In countries such as Japan, where the value of English for international purposes is very great, not only in trading with America, Australia, India, and Europe, but for science, invention, and general thought, language teaching has generally been started on the wrong lines. In addition, Japan had been guided in the past twenty years chiefly by English teachers of the old school who had no knowledge of psychology. Even when Basic came to their attention through the work of Mr. Rossiter in Eta-jima (1929-1932), their attempts at copying it were limited to making word-lists designed for story-writing. Lists of this sort, based on the old ideas of memory-work, get the learner nowhere, and it will not be surprising if a form of English needing so much time and giving so little power of saying anything clearly is taken out of the schools in the near future.
This might give Basic its chance, and certainly more would be done in one year by a private learner than has so far been possible in three or even five years in the present schools. By 1941 between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 Japanese had enough knowledge of English to make a new start with Basic as a guide, and it would be sad for teachers who have been working so hard to be put out of business for no better reason than that errors have been made by others. But if, when the present troubles are over, Basic is given a test in the last year before the Middle School, the Japanese will quickly be profiting by short-wave Radio News (page 93).
A first need in all countries where English has been started on the old lines is the training of a body of teachers who will be able to get the best out of the new system. That is what Dr. Purcell was doing for two years in Singapore. Even without such training, "The Basic Way" in language learning may be with profit, but when the reasons for a change are made the process of adjustment goes more smoothly -- and a month or two will be quite enough for anyone who makes the comparison with an open mind. -90- An important chance of training teachers came in 1938-1940 when a start was made in Hyderabad and other parts of India. The organization was put into the hands of Mr. Adolph Myers, who, working with The Times of India in Bombay, has been building up a great future for Basic for the 300,000,000 living south of the Himalayas. Among others who are supporting Basic in India is Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, President of the All-India Congress.
For some learners in the East the sounds of a European language are hard. In India, Burma, and the Near East a natural rhythm comes readily if attention is given to the Basic rules. This is equally true of Russian, and our first representative in Moscow, Mrs. Litvinoff, whose Basic school books were in use for more than three years, was surprised by the record time in which learners got control of the system in the U.S.S.R.
The first Basic group in Moscow was that in the Institute of Legal Psychiatry in 1933. A short time after, others were formed in the Radio Committee, in one of the Military Academies, the Stalin Industrial Academy, the Stanko-Instrument Institute, and the Cinema Institute. In 1935, after a meeting in the Leningrad House of Science, teachers' circles were started, and the Arctic Institute became interested. At the same time, helpers were trained in the Foreign Language Combinat, from which the Red Army gets most of its teachers. From 1937 to 1940, Mrs. Litvinoff was in the Urals, teaching in Sverdlovsk, before she went to America ; so the work is no longer limited to the West.
In Australia, the Modern Language Association of New South Wales now has a Basic English division. The first meeting took place in February 1936, with a talk by Senator the Hon. Macartney Abbott on "The Need for an International Thought Exchange." In 1935-1936 there were discussions of Basic in the Federal Parliament. Senator Arkins has kept the question before the public and Professor Sir C. Stanton Hicks of Adelaide University has been interesting himself in the use of Basic for the purposes of science. At the same time, Mr. H. Walpole of Queen's University, Ontario, was able to put Basic on the map in Canada before going to Bogota to make a start with some of the chief schools in Colombia. -91- In 1932-1933 Basic was headlined in the news in America, and came to the front again in 1939 through the use made of it in Boston, Massachusetts, for the teaching of those whose knowledge of English is still less than normal. Miss Mary Guyton, an expert on Adult Education in Boston, Massachusetts, came over to London in 1935 to make detailed notes on the step-by-step material then being printed. In 1936-1939 talks in Basic were given on the Boston short-wave radio (WIXAL); and in 1943 Dr. Richards and his Committee at Harvard were able to make good use of what Churchill had said about their work on September 6.
In Europe, the organization of Basic is going forward quickly wherever war, or the fear of war, has not put education in the hands of the military. Events in Spain have made Buenos Aires and Montevideo seem more important than Madrid or Barcelona, where the schools so well started by Mr. Calvert and Mr. Teague were needed for machine guns. When Geneva came under a cloud, Dr. Vocadlo made himself responsible for a Danubian Center in Prague; Dr. Otto Neurath undertook the designing of pictures for Basic school books at the Mundaneum Institute in The Hague ; and new support was given to the system from 1938 to 1940 in Athens, where between 4,000 and 5,000 were learning English through Basic at the Institute of English Studies.
The first European country to make Basic a part of its education system was Denmark, where a Copenhagen night school went on the air from the Kalundborg station in 1932 after only 50 hours' work. A start was made in the day schools in 1934, and in the first stage there were more than 40 of these with about 2,000 Basic learners. With the help of Mr. August Lerche, through whose Hvad er Basic Engelck ? the system came to the attention of the authorities, our representative, Mrs. Kamma Taylor, was quickly getting together the material necessary to give the teachers a good chance ; and in 1938-1939 no less than 85 out of 105 taking English in Copenhagen were making use of her books.
In a number of other countries governments are moving slowly, even where teachers of the old school seem at present to be completely in control ; and though it may take another ten years for the new ideas to get on the top of the wave, the wind is blowing in the right direction.
So much for the sixteen years which have gone to make Basic a living force in education and a new hope in international relations. They have been years of spadework, and those who have taken part in the planting and watering now may get comfort from watching the growth of new seed in fertile fields.

63. International Library of Psychology, 6th printing, 1944.
64. In fact, The Bible in Basic English came out in 1949. ED.

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10. The Future

There were good reasons for the belief that the Great War was in fact only a little one -- a sort of one-act play before the curtain was lifted on more serious military operations. But long before we get back to normal, something will have to be done for the development of international feeling. What is chiefly needed at the present time is some new idea, by which the mind of man may be lifted out of its narrow prison house, where food, sex, and money, or the political troubles of the nation are its only interests outside sport.
What makes a nation is a common language. What will make men international will be a common language. That is one part of the great idea.
Basic is the only chance. The earth is getting smaller through the discoveries of science; and radio is now putting Babel into the houses of those who have no knowledge even of the names of the languages they are hearing. One great step forward would be news every hour of the day and night, in a common language, from one or other of 24 stations working with a common purpose through Basic.
Five minutes would be enough -- five minutes every hour, on the hour -- to give everyone the feeling that this little earth was pulling itself together. And with that feeling would come a new hope for all the forces moving for peace. It is 4 P.M. and we are turning on Copenhagen ; 5 P.M., New York ; 6 P.M., Geneva ; 7 P.M., possibly Peking. We have been hearing for five minutes a Basic account of those events which, in the opinion of the experts responsible for the news given out by the country or station in question, were of international interest. Not much organization would be needed, and there are a number of businessmen who are in a position to get the idea started in less than six months.
Any school in any country would then have the chance of hearing Basic, the second language of all (no longer looked on as the language of England or America), and that language would quickly become as much a part of its everyday experience as the knowledge of the names of the countries from which the voices were talking. That would make it possible for books to be produced in any country for every country, and the second step would be a Basic Library of General Knowledge covering the sciences in 1,000 divisions -- all so cheap that no workingman would be without them.
A third step on the same scale would be a Basic Parallel Library of 1,000 books giving the Basic form of the works of great writers of the present and past and on the opposite page the words of the writer himself, so that everyone would at least have a chance of learning any language in which he might be interested. The private learner has generally gone forward more quickly because he has been given, or has been able to get, the answers with the questions. The schoolboy who was a jump in front of the others, because he had seen the Key in secret, went in fear of punishment; but in his heart he said to himself: "The quickest way of learning languages is clearly to have the answers on the opposite page ; so when I get away from school, I will have no more of their tricks." And if, later on, he was interested in a new language, as a private learner, he got as much as possible from a comparison of stories in two forms, with the words in his natural language as a guide. Sometimes he went wrong, by getting the sense without the structure ; but this was because his comparisons were made without any system, and the stories were not put before him in parallel form, step by step, with the necessary notes.
The Basic Parallel Library will be designed for three purposes:

At first, only the better teachers will be ready to make use of such material; the others will go on with the old tests without seeing that the makers of such tests were laughing at them, and saying that the only safe way with the foolish is to keep them to fixed forms of question and answer. "Let the teacher keep to the book and he will make no errors; let him be given new forms and new uses as new words, because he has not enough knowledge to make the connections clear." Basic is on the side of the learner all the time, and it is better for the foolish teacher to make a small number of errors than to give orders from his book to an army of badly trained little monkeys -- who will make the right answers only as long as they are kept to the forms of question locked up in the expert's secret Key.
Books of 100,000 words are now printed for sixpence, ten cents, or 50 sen : so books of 20,000 words at one penny, two cents, or ten sen would be quite possible -- even without the help of a moving picture star to get things started.
At any rate, it is safe to say that international talking pictures in Basic will come automatically, but the quicker the better now that the stars are getting tired of learning new languages. In March 1937, Mary Pickford said as much, but had no suggestion to make about the language which would take her through every country.
Long before 1939 Henry Ford gave the answer to this and other questions of the same sort when, in agreement with President Masaryk and H. G. Wells, he made English for Everyman his new peace-cry to take the place of war-cries of the past ; but the different language groups got at one another's throats again, before the idea had time to take root. Now with the growth of that Everyman's English which is named Basic, the old arguments become ten times stronger. So, though the lights have gone out in country after country in Europe, there are hundreds of millions looking out from the dark into a future which is still bright with hope. -95-
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