Word: basics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Basic English get started...
...extraordinary piece of virtuosity on the part of Ogden. I can't imagine Basic English or any of its derivatives having come into existence without this peculiar thing. Ogden was a very good scholar, good enough for a chair in the classics and destined for one--but he was interested in too many other things, in everything else, in fact...
...sort of Universal Re-phraser for anyone who found difficulty in putting his ideas into words. The draft Prospectus ran: "You have the Ideas," "We have the Words." It wouldn't have been true that they had the ideas, but certainly Ogden had enough of both. And he created Basic English by interrogating his intelligent friends; he had hundreds of them; he belonged to seven Clubs, at least, and could contrive not to be a club bore...
There's a wonderful book called the General Basic English Dictionary in which more than 20,000 words are defined in Ogden's Basic 850. The definitions, if anyone compares them with the pocket Oxford dictionary, are of about the same scope. They had to beat the pocket Oxford. That was his test...
...spent a number of years teaching in China. In view of your experiences there and the current anti-Western attitude of the Chinese, do you think a concept like Basic English would be tolerated by them...