PART   C2 :   THE INVENTION OF BASIC ENGLISH

	Basic English as an International Language      Elsie Graham	153
	Basic English -- its Position and Plans   J. A. Lauwerys	161
	Basic English in Literature   William Empson	169
	Basic English Today, A Postscript   Norman Pritchard	174

Basic English as an International Language

Elsie Graham
This, the first of two papers under the above title, with its own sub-title The System and its History, was read before the Commonwealth Section of the Royal Society of Arts, August 1966, four years later than the paper on Basic English and its Value for Science printed as C1 above. When discussing science the present paper partly cover the same ground and has accordingly been somewhat abridged.
    Basic English is English with its vocabulary cut down to the words most essential for general communications. It must not be supposed from this summary description, however, that Basic is simply a word-list. It is, as we shall see, by virtue of the way in which its vocabulary has been selected, a logical system, in which economy is based on an analysis of the fundamental characteristics of the language.¹ Its principal qualifications for the role of an international language are two, namely, the ease and rapidity with which it may be learned and the efficiency with which it does its job. In the 850 words which form its vocabulary may be expressed, lucidly if simply, practically everything necessary for communication on a non-technical level. Though it functions according to the grammatical structure of Standard English the extremely small vocabulary, its selective nature, and the way in which it is organised reduce the problems of learning in every way, and ensure a clearer understanding and a more effective control of both words and syntax than any learner plunged into the luxuriant complexities of unpruned English can hope to achieve in a far, far longer time.
    The system was the invention of C. K. Ogden, one of the most original minds of his generation, and was the outcome of many years study and research in the field of linguistics. Always interested in the idea of a universal language, he was led to suspect that English itself offered a unique possibility of adaptation for this purpose by the discovery, in connection with other work, that in defining English terms the same fundamental words kept cropping up over and over again, suggesting that it might be possible to establish a nucleus of “basic” words to which the meaning of all others could be reduced.
    The words were selected by the application of a variety of interlocking criteria and confirmed by a laborious process of testing. The principles of exclusion are rather more clear-cut than those of inclusion. Obviously, words whose function is more emotive than symbolic, words chiefly needed for stylistic effects, and words belonging to technical fields, have no place here. And, in general, words which can be clearly paraphrased in ten other words, or less, are dispensable. On the positive side, the first consideration is the importance of the idea or reference which a word symbolises; but in weighing one word of equal referential value against another, we must take into account their respective capacities for easily grasped metaphorical use, their ability to combine with other words in the list to farm either self-evident compounds or useful and readily explained idioms, and, other things being equa1~, their spelling and pronunciation. But it is clear that these last considerations must always be subordinate to the rest. With so small a number of words, eccentricities of spelling or pronunciation add little to the learner’s burden. Incidentally, no two words of the same form or sound but different meanings were allowed in the list to confuse him.
    The mention of figurative and idiomatic uses may sound as if a great deal of contraband were being smuggled in under cover of one word. But the very opposite is true. In learning any foreign language in the ordinary way—the way most of us have done in school—every word comes trailing all its possible senses and uses, and it is left to experience to sort them out for us. It is the distinction of Basic that it sets forth clearly the exact senses and uses which it allows, and though it takes advantage of the existence of different senses and uses, when these can be linked and presented convincingly to the learner, all the words are by no means permitted every meaning and every use met with in Standard English. In the book The Basic Words it is shown against each word in what senses and as what parts of speech it may be used, as well as the idioms of which it may form part—and the figurative, idiomatic, and extra-grammatical roles are limited to those which are of reasonably easy apprehension. The methods of teaching these things, by pictures, diagrams, and derivations (based on meaning, not on etymology) have been carefully worked out to capture the interest of the learner and make a lasting imprint on his memory.
    All the rules of English grammar are observed in Basic English, with the exception of two admittedly obsolescent points, the use of the subjunctive, and of the auxiliary “shall” as distinguished from “will”. But with the great burden of strong-verb conjugation sloughed off, and only the most straightforward word-order admitted, until the basic sentence-pattern has been thoroughly assimilated, the. grammatical structure is of minimum complexity, and proves to be easily mastered.
    I have implied that Basic's raison d’etre was to function as a universal language, and it was, certainly, in the search for such a language that it began. But it is obvious that hardly could the idea of using English for this purpose have been born when it was followed by its twin—the idea of Basic as the best first stage in the teaching of English. (In Ogden's first full-length exposition of the system, the book Basic English, the two purposes are stated at the start.) For obviously a system that enables the learner actually to use English clearly and fluently in less time than is required to give him a start by ordinary methods represents a revolution in English-teaching. The time required naturally varies —- from a month for an intelligent European adult to two years for children in school, with anything in between for those whose native-language structures are quite different from English, depending on the age and intelligence of the student, and whether he is learning by himself, with a private teacher, or in a class. The shortness of the period of course depends on the use of Basic graded courses, explanatory pictures, records, and other aids.
    But what distinguishes Basic even more than the little time needed for learning it is the fact that at the end of his Basic training the learner really is able to express himself, for all ordinary purposes, in English. For that is just what a large proportion of the students trained in full English never achieve at all. A great number even of European learners spend long years in acquiring no more than a smattering of our language—as we of theirs. As for learners from Africa and the East, for whom the task is especially formidable, the inadequacy and the poor quality of the English even of University students are proverbial. Of West African English it has recently been said that “after up to twelve years instruction, the results are disappointing to a degree”.² The foreigner who has mastered Basic English, in contrast, is not only in control of a complete means of communication, but, if he desires to go further, he has a firm foothold in the language from which to progress, organised stage by organised stage, to the conquest of the whole territory.
    Ogden put out his word-list, inviting comment, in 1928, and in 1930 the book Basic English was published. The response from countries all over the world was immediate and enthusiastic. The already existing demand for English as a second language, based of course on the fact that it was already the language of vast and very influential areas of the globe -- influential commercially, politically, and culturally -- was no doubt the strongest factor in Basic's appeal, but there were also many who were captivated by this brilliant solution to the problem of Babel, an international language in which all men might come to an understanding.
    It is impossible to list all the successes of those early years, the prominent people who declared themselves in its favour, the experiments that were carried out with it. By 1939 Basic had produced 100 books, including an English Dictionary of 20,000 words with definitions in Basic (the actual publication date was 1940), and it had trained representatives, operating flourishing Basic Centres, in 30 countries, and was being widely taught, with official or semi-official backing in a number of countries or states. It had also, early in its career, attracted financial support from American Foundations. At first it had been financed privately by Ogden, using as the instrument for its launching The Orthological Institute, an organisation for general linguistic research and experiment which he had set up in 1927. But about 1932 the Payne Fund of New York came forward with a generous grant, and this was later augmented by the Rockefeller Foundation, which in addition in 1933 sponsored a research programme for Japan, and from 1934 to 1937 one for China.
    Naturally, Basic was not without its attackers. These were chiefly of two sorts : first, lovers of English who somehow got it into their heads that it would have a damaging effect on the language, or might even take its place; and second, persons who had an interest in other systems of teaching English overseas.
    The first group, quite overlooking the purpose of the system, and frequently without taking the trouble to get any knowledge of its word-list or its working, made a loud outcry about the great qualities of English and the need to keep them from being undermined. This sort of thing seems so foolish that it would be hard to take seriously but for the fact that it was said by, among others, some quite noted writers.
    So far as this argument makes sense, it is clearly based on the belief that Basic English as such is bad English, which is simply untrue. Basic is naturally more limited in its ways of saying things, less pleasing in its effects, than full English -- which takes nothing from its value for the purpose of giving men of all nations a common language for everyday needs. But there is nothing wrong about it; its use for international purposes will not get those whose mother-tongue is English into bad ways, or make them less able or less ready to make full use of their natural language. What Basic is in competition with is not the English of our great writers, but the sort of poor or unnatural English used so frequently by overseas learners, who have come out of the attempt at learning the full language with very little knowledge or control of it. It will certainly have the effect of making their English better; but it seems highly improbable that on the English language itself it will have any effect at all. As far those who went so far as to see Basic taking the place of full English, Churchill bad a word for them, “purblind”.
    The second group were those having a connection with English-teaching in other countries, and supporting systems of teaching or first-level word-lists which were making money for them and might be put out of business by Basic. Their chief argument was that Basic was unnatural English, and that the learner desiring to go on from it to full English would be faced with the need of “unlearning” a number of things -- in other words, that he had been trained in a way of using English which was strange to English ears and would have no place in the normal language. This, again, is simply not so. Basic is not a distortion of English, it is a selection from English, a natural part of it. It gives no structures or uses which are not in normal English -- it only doesn’t give everything. The learner going on from Basic to full English will have additions to make to his knowledge, naturally, but there will be no question of “unlearning” anything. In support of this, all I have so far said about the attacks on Basic English has been in Basic itself, and even if it seemed to you a little flat, I am certain it will not have seemed “un-English”.
    Another charge made much of by these same people, is that Basic's claim to consist of only 850 words is false, and that there are many more to be learnt. Basic has never made any secret of the fact that it employs a number of resources for enlarging the fundamental vocabulary; these are part of its technique and prominently displayed in every exposition of the system. It expects the learner to master the English forms of the numerals, the days of the week, the months of the year and the commoner weights and measures, in addition to the 850 words. But none of these is on the same footing, as a learning item, with the working words of a language. They are things which can easily be learnt by rote, as groups, by means of mnemonic rhymes and so on, and to Ogden it would have been quite absurd to grant them the status of the words of the 850. In addition, Basic lists and avails itself of 51 tested international words, such as “hotel”. But these really are international, at any rate in big towns. Many learners will know all of them, others may be ignorant of some. But it is a matter of very small importance if some learners cannot avail themselves of them all, or faced with a few of them, find them strange. Again, as learning items, being for the most part simply the names of familiar things or institutions (“automobile”, “university”), or titles (such as “Queen”), that is, mere labels, these are not on a par with the “working words” of the essential vocabulary. Finally, Basic permits the making of new words, not only by forming compounds, but by adding the endings -er, -ing, and -ed to 300 of the Basic nouns and a small selection of the adjectives, to make such forms as painting, painter, and painted from paint. But these are not new words to which the learner has no clue, they are forms whose sense is carefully covered by simple rules. It is only the rules which have to be learnt, and once these are mastered the learner has at his disposal an instrument for enlarging his vocabulary by building on what he knows -- a very different thing from being presented with a long list of new words to learn from scratch.
    One illusion under which many of the critics of Basic laboured was the curious idea that the only way of turning full English into Basic was by translating literally, word for word. This led to a lot of innocent merriment, as when Basic was held up to ridicule by translating Churchill's famous “blood, sweat, and tears” as blood, body-water, and eye-wash”.³ Who could grudge them their fun ? -- It was tempting. But hardly serious criticism. For any educated person knows that translation into any language demands a more intelligent approach than that. All translation requires a rethinking of the ideas to be expressed, but Basic above all, since it cannot mimic, must analyse.
    It is this characteristic that has given it a third important function, that of serving as a discipline for the clarification of thought. Translation of English texts into Basic by English-speaking school children and even university students has been found to be most valuable training in clear thinking. The user of Basic is compelled to know what he is talking about; he cannot hide behind a smoke screen of imperfectly understood words. There have been a number of interesting and successful experiments on these lines. I am sorry that time does not permit me to give chapter and verse.
    The war called a halt to Basic's expansion overseas, but not to the activities of the Institute, which in spite of a shortage of paper went on investigating teaching problems and producing—or preparing—books of all sorts, including, though it was not published till 1949, the tremendous achievement of The Bible in Basic English. Then in 1943 came the event which seemed at first sight to be the making of Basic's fortune, Churchill's espousal of its cause and appointment of a Committee of Ministers to look into it. But all that happened for nearly four years was that, as a result of war-time difficulties and in anticipation of this Governmental support, the American Foundations withdrew their help in this country, and the demand called into being by the Churchill publicity found the Institute in no position to supply it. At last, The Basic English Foundation was set up by Ogden, in 1947, at the request of the Government, with a modest annual grant from the Ministry of Education. The Foundation was to work in conjunction with The Orthological Institute, which each year undertook an agreed programme. Much valuable work was done. But there were crippling restrictions, and Basic's position in other countries was never re-established. In the end, the grant ceased in 1953, and though both the Orthological Institute and the Basic English Foundation remained in being, activity was reduced to a minimum and eventually came to a temporary complete halt with the death of Ogden in 1957.
    Basic now seems to be almost back at the beginning again, and in a world very different from that which welcomed it so eagerly in the ‘30s. True, the spread of English is greater than ever, and so is the demand for English-teaching. But though Basic and Basic Courses are still used in a number of places abroad, the drive to establish it as the normal first step in the teaching of English no longer exists. In some of the developing countries, the report has spread that Basic is “under-privileged English”, than which nothing could be better calculated to turn against it the very people who have most need of it. Everywhere, foreigners are devoting years trying to learn the English of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, and frequently ending up, as we hear again and again, in lamentable case. There seems to be a feeling abroad, especially in the Commonwealth and the U.S.A., that English is evidently fated to become the second language of the world, and a vague idea that, since this is so, it can be left to make its way by its own momentum. But surely this is illusory. English has not become any easier to learn because it has become more widespread. The problem still needs to be tackled, and Basic still offers the simplest and most hopeful solution.
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1 . The list itself appears below on pp. 184-185, and the details of the logical system are discussed further on pp 213-227.
2 . Times Educational Supplement, 20 August 1965.
3 . Churchill's Original, "I have nothing to offer but, blood, toil, tears and sweat." properly translates as, "All I am offering you is death and pain, bitter trouble and hard, unending work."

Similar paper give to The Royal Society of Arts.

Basic English -- its Position and Plans

J. A. Lauwerys
There is no need to describe Basic English : Dr. Graham has explained in an admirable and concise way, its nature, functions and purposes. They were summarized by C. K. Ogden in his 1943 Memorandum to the War Cabinet " "Basic English is a selection of 850 English words, used in simple structural patterns, which is both an international auxiliary language and a self-contained first stage for the teaching of any form of wider or Standard English." And, as Sir Winston Churchill said in his 1943 Harvard speech " "Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of very wide transactions of practical business and interchange of ideas. . . ."
    If the qualities and virtues of Basic are indeed what they are claimed to be, questions immediately arise. Why then has its progress been slow and rather halting during the last twenty years ? What use could and should be made of Basic ? What could it contribute to the spreading of scientific knowledge in the countries of the Commonwealth and, indeed, of the world ? What programme of activities ought now to be planned ?
    In the 1930s, I was responsible for the training of teachers of science and mathematics in the London Institute of Education. Among these were many from Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa. Many had language difficulties caused by inadequate and poor quality teaching of English. But, equally important, on their return home they would have to convey to their pupils scientific knowledge using as a medium of communication vernacular languages heavily tainted by animistic and superstitious beliefs.
    . . . (link)

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Basic English in Literature

Excerpts from a Radio Talk broadcast on W.R.U.L. Boston and reprinted in Kenyon Review, 1940. (written in Basic English).
William Empson
But first, why did I say that keeping within the Basic words would not make good poetry ? Chiefly because the great trick of poetry, the reason, you might say, for writing in verse at all, is that it lets the writer get his thoughts crushed into a small space. Then it is like gunpowder, if the trick is done well ; the thought comes bursting into the reader's mind. But this is not the only way of writing poetry, or if it is, then the trick may be done with very simple words. We will take an example of Wordsworth doing that. Probably Wordsworth would be pleased with this bit of the argument ; because it was his chief opinion that poetry had better be made out of "the simple language of men", though he made good poetry out of had words as well.

The sea was laughing at a distance, all
The solid mountains were as bright as clouds

    That is Wordsworth, and in Basic, and good poetry ; we will come back to it later on. You might get an idea that the Basic words are dead and uninteresting, because they are so simple; that all the bright and living English words are outside the list. This is clearly not true in the two lines from Wordsworth; they may be simple, but there is nothing “dead” about them.
    Let us go back now to the lines by Wordsworth. They are about the morning when Wordsworth first was certain that he give himself to writing poetry. It is early in the morning, and Wordsworth is up on the top of a mountain. There is an interesting point here, because Wordsworth made changes in the lines when he was older. So in our Basic account we have another thing to do. This is the first way of writing the lines

magnificent

The morning was, in memorable pomp,
More glorious than I ever had beheld.
The sea was laughing at a distance, all
The solid mountains were as bright as clouds.

Now an attempt at the sense in Basic. “The morning seemed strong and beautiful. I had a respect for it, as if it was a king, a ruler, coming out before the eyes of his nation, and with a train of servants round him. It seemed that this would never go out of my memory. The morning was more brightly and clearly beautiful than I had ever seen it before. The sea was laughing at a distance; all the solid mountains were as bright as clouds.” Well, that took a great number of words. And one trouble is, in giving all those words for pomp we get a detailed picture, not a general idea. Magnificent and glorious seem all right; we are able to say why they are different; one is strong, the other bright. But there is another trouble here. We have made these three words seem much more different than they were in the poetry. In them all, the morning (or the sun) is making itself seem great, like the ruler. When we see this we see why they are in that order. First the morning seems strong, maybe like a ruler who is doing great things (magnificent); then this gives the idea of the ruler coming out on view (pomp). But you are not to have any protest in your mind against rulers and the way they make themselves important. So the morning was truly bright in itself (glorious), and the sea was not self-important, it was laughing. There is a sort of pull here between two ideas, that of the authority of the good ruler and the natural good of being free. And the effect is that this beautiful morning is like a sign of some good secret at the back of all experience. As so frequently in Wordsworth, in fact, there is an idea of religion not clearly in view. It seems to me that putting the lines into Basic makes this turn of thought much clearer, for the very reason that Basic is so short of words like “magnificent”. The effect is like taking the cover off a machine.
    The last two lines are not simple, though they are in Basic. You get a strange feeling that solid and bright are two opposites coming together.

The solid mountains were as bright as clouds.

The mountains are solid because they are great hard masses, a cause of danger; commonly they are dark; they have a cruel authority; they have a connection with the sad experiences down here on earth. But now they have given up all that, and they are bright, like the clouds in the air. So all the parts of this morning view are working together; they are all a sign of the good secret about everything. And there is the same pull here as before between the ideas of authority and of being free.
    But there is another point here. This surprising connection of ideas, solid and bright, was there waiting for us before, inside the complex words magnificent, pomp, and glorious. The ruler makes us see his force when he comes out on view; he is solid. But he is a good ruler, and will make us happy; or at any rate his purpose in coming out on view is to give us that feeling. One of the effects of his force, in fact, is that we are now looking at something beautiful, as he goes by in his ornaments, and he does that as a sign that he will make us happy. So he is bright. And all this group of ideas, which may seem very complex, is not one person’s invention but the normal feeling in words like pomp and magnificent. But Wordsworth was taking his idea in the words more seriously. It was his serious belief that the beautiful view was a sign of some much greater good thing. And the way he gives us that feeling is by taking the complex idea in magnificent to bits. That is why he is able to give us this shock with the simple Basic words solid and bright. Because it is not only the reader who has to be able to take an idea to bits. We see here the writer having to do it as well. After starting with an old comparison, of the sun to a ruler, which would have no great effect, he gets a feeling, “Why is that interesting to me ? What is this suggestion it has, of some more important idea ?” and so be takes it to bits. The surprise which is so important for poetry comes in his further thought about the comparison, and there he is using simpler ideas. So it is not quite by chance that the last two lines here are only using words that are in the Basic list.
    But when Wadsworth was older it seemed to him that there was not enough weight in these lines for such an important poet as the older Wordsworth. And he made changes, which take it much further away from Basic. One good judge^* has said that he made it much better, and maybe you will say the same. These new lines:

magnificent

The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e’er I had beheld—in front
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds.

The chief changes are in “the morning rose” for “the morning was”; “the sea lay laughing” for “the sea was laughing”; the “mountains shone” for “mountains were”, and the new words in front and near. Now certainly this seems tighter verse. There are more facts in it. One writer says that this makes it clearer. For example, it is now clear that the sea was in the middle of the view, in front, and that the mountains were nearer to Wordsworth than the sea was. But here it is time to make a protest against something I was saying before. I said that it was important for poetry to get ideas crushed together. But what ideas ? Why, after all, is it important for us to get the right picture here ? Maybe some readers of the old lines had got the right feeling, though they took the sea to be nearer than the mountains. But now Wordsworth says to them : “You are making a foolish error. In fact, at the time when I had this important feeling, the sea was not nearer than the mountains.” That is, in the new lines Wordsworth is painting a picture. This is as good a morning as even he, William Wordsworth, has ever seen, and he is giving a clear account of it. You see how cold this makes him; he is an expert on views of mountains. But in the old lines it was his feelings about the sea and the mountains and the morning which were important, and the forces working in his heart. And that is what is interesting in the lines, if anything is interesting. The idea that pushing in more facts about the view makes the lines more interesting is simply an error.
    The other changes are all changes in verbs; he takes out the simple Basic ones and puts in complex verbs. Then it will be better because more ideas will have been pushed in—that is his feeling. The morning rose, he says, came up, as if the sun sometimes went down in the morning. This detail seems very little needed. But it makes clear that the time was very early in the morning, and maybe this touch has an effect. What came up was the sun, and the change puts your attention onto the sun. Possibly it was only the sun, not the morning in general, who was a ruler and magnificent. At any rate the sea lay laughing; it was flat on its back. It had no authority against the sun; it was in a feeble position. Taken by itself, the change to lay might be a beautiful one, but it has a connection with the others. And then the mountains shone; they gave out light. So it is clear that they gave back light from the first rays of the sun, which was then first coming up in the morning. They were not bright in themselves. They were only giving back light from the sun. So the old shock of surprise in solid and bright has quite gone. There is no secret about the morning. It was the sun which was making things bright. This is quite clear now that Wordsworth has given us all the details.
    In fact there are only two important persons now, the sun and Wordsworth. Every one of the changes has been working in this direction. Wordsworth is important because the reader has to get clear the details of what Wordsworth saw. And the sun is important because it is the cause, as it is from the point of view of science, of all the details in the picture. But the old effect was a pull between two feelings, between saying that authority is good and saying it is good to be free and open to experience. The weight now has all come down on the side of authority. When Wordsworth was young and in trouble be came back to the mountains and took them as teachers. The poor mountains are nobody now, but it is pleasing to see a smile from a mountain when Wordsworth or the sun goes past. A good mountain, at such a time, will take its hat off. It is a strange and sad thing, but it probably seemed to Wordsworth, when he made these changes, he was only giving the lines a bit of polish. What he was doing was more like turning the guns round from firing at the Germans and pointing them against the French.
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*  See Selincourt, preface to The Prelude. See also Basic is Teaching East and West, pp. 99—100.

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Basic English Today.*   A Postscript

Norman Pritchard
Whether as a help in the natural sciences, in the social sciences, in international communications or in the study of literature, Basic English has a role to play today in spite of the adverse events and circumstances. The editors are grateful to Norman Pritchard for the following postscript.

At the same time that bureaucracy was impeding the smooth progress of what had been up to that time, a triumphal march, other things were happening in the world of linguistics and language teaching. By the early 1950s America had begun an enormous programme of research into and practical teaching of foreign languages to their armed forces and of English to their immigrants and to school children in the Philippines and Puerto Rico. From this work flowed a wave of courses which were informed by the psychological theories of the behaviourists (Thorndike, Skinner) and the linguistic theories of Structuralism associated with the names of Bloomfield, Trager, Smith, Fries, and Lado. So well-funded was this movement, and so universal its application, that the next two decades were to be dominated by it. The age of audio-lingualism, with its impressive technology typified by the language laboratory, had begun. Basic English, like many other approaches to language teaching, was simply swamped by the wave.
    A final judgment on the fate of Basic, might well be that it has not died out at all : it has rather become an unacknowledged -- even unconscious -- part of teaching and publishing strategy. A swift comparison between the word-list of Basic and any other such list (e.g. West's General Service List) or the contents of any of the English Language coursebooks or Simplified Readers (e.g. the Longman Structured Readers) will reveal an immediate correlation of a high level. This is not to suggest that Ogden's ideas have been basely pirated and unacknowledged -- Ogden was far too generous a spirit to have worried overmuch in any case -- but rather that he was one of the first to have seen and the first to have codified a system of language simplification which embodies a fundamental tenet -- or even truism -- of teaching : that the teacher first has to think it out clearly ; and then has to teach it simply. Basic certainly still lives and is being constantly re-discovered in the classroom all over the world. Given the cyclical nature of the history of ideas in general and language teaching in particular, it would not be surprising to see Basic English taken up once again. It certainly deserves more serious research than it has received over the past twenty years. But bearing in mind its unfortunate history, one must hope that no future Prime Minister ever takes up the cause !
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* For recent discussion and appraisals of the varied services of Basic English and its derivative simplifications of English, see Techniques in Language Control by I. A. Richards and Christine Gibson, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Massachusetts 1974. Also So Much Nearer, Essays Toward a World English, by I. A. Richards, 274 pages, Harcourt, Brace, and World, New York 1968 ; and Design for Escape Newbury House Publishers. Note especially "No doubt we can now see, as the proposer of Basic English hardly could, that an auxiliary world language will have to be (as with the automobile and the airplane) a developing design re-designed as performance data indicate." So Much Nearer p. 241

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