Basic English
Simplified form of English devised and promoted by the writer and scholar C K Ogden and the literary critic I A Richards in the 1920s and 1930s as an international auxiliary language; as a route into Standard English for foreign learners (little used now); and as a reminder to the English-speaking world of the virtues of plain language. Its name derives from the initial letters of British, American, scientific, international, and commercial.
| Basic has a vocabulary of 850 words (plus names, technical terms, and so on), only 18 of which are verbs or ‘operators’. |
