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正常英语Normal English。指平时大家学习使用的英语。
基本英语Basic English。指从正常英语中精简提炼后的核心英语
http://ogden.basic-english.org/texts/lbe1.html
http://ogden.basic-english.org/texts/lbe.html
LEARNING BASIC ENGLISH
A Practical Handbook
for
English-Speaking People
By I. A. RICHARDS
and
CHRISTINE GIBSON
what the Basic is for, and what its effects might be. 核心基础(基本)英语是做什么的，它的效果又如何。
Basic meaning, basic sense, basic notion, basic concept of a word:
CHAPTER ONE
An Over-all View
Basic is a system of everyday English words used in the regular forms of normal English（常规，正常）. It is a selection of those English words which -- taken together and used as we are all using them all the time -- will among them do the most work. It is the smallest number Of English words with a general enough covering power, among them, to let a man say almost everything -- to say it well enough for his general day-to-day purposes in all the range of his interests however wide -- in business, trade, industry, science, medical work -- in all the arts of living and in all the exchanges of knowledge, belief, opinion, views, and news which a general-purpose language has to take care of.
基本英语 vs 正常英语
基本英语是一个正常英语的简易系统。这个系统择取了数量尽可能少的但其综合能力却非常强，能完全胜任日常英语交流的那一部分词汇。掌握了这部分词汇及其相配的言语系统，一个人无论其兴趣在那里无论兴趣多广，无论是在商业，贸易，工业，科学，医疗等生活的任何层面，都可以用这些词来表述其领域涉猎的几乎所有的日常交流的话题。
Basic is a very small-scale language to have such a range of uses. It has only 850 head words (领军单词) in it. Putting on one side one point we'll be taking up later, these words go through all the changes of form which the same words in full, unlimited English go through.
基本英语涉及850个领军单词。这些单词在正常英语里变化，在基本英语里也不缺少。例如take是一个基本词汇，它的变化形式也包括：I take, he takes, he is taking, he took, and it was taken 。I 也是是一个基本词汇，它的变化形式也有：I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours，同正常英语一样。
For example, take is one of these Basic words. So we say in Basic: I take, he takes, he is taking, he took, and it was taken as in full English. So again we say I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours, （基本词汇表里只有“I”，没有其他的，还有mine,是另一个意思）。 and so on as in full English.
与基本英语词汇同步的基本英语语法规则比正常英语的无尽的语法规则少的多。语法规则选取简单扼要 – 目的是利于学习者的掌握。但规则还是原来的规则，没有任何改变，只是对其数量进行了限制。
基本语法规则的选择基于两个考量：（1）结构正规但简单，尽量减少学习者的学习麻烦，（2）数量限制但不损及基本规则的正常运作。 这是Ogden先生一贯主张。
Rules may be broken in Basic as in any other language. But the rules of Basic are far simpler than the rules of unlimited English. They were made as simple as possible -- in the interests of the learner. But not by changing anything in English structure, only by limiting it. Parallel with and together with the selection of words for the Basic word list, Mr. Ogden made a selection of the forms of statements -- the structure rules of Basic -- with two ends in view: (1) to make Basic as clear and regular in structure as possible and so as little trouble to the learner as possible, and (2) to keep Basic a normal though limited form of English.
对于选词的考量，我们都同意有些词的用途比另些词多，例如：do 就比extrapolate 用途多。还有，有些词或多或少都表达同样的意思，例如：make （制作） 和 fabricate（制作）, manufacture（生产）, contrive（设计，做到）, constitute（组成，建立）; produce（生产）。 但make 却比其他的那些词用途多。我们就是挑选do，make，这样的词来学。
We are all in agreement that some words are, in general, of more use than others -- the word do, for example, is of more use than the word extrapolate. This is equally true with some words which have more or less the same sense: the word make is of more use than the words fashion, fabricate, manufacture, contrive, constitute; produce, and all the rest of the words you'll see under make in Roget's Thesaurus, say.
关键点就在这儿。基本英语的诞生就是基于这个事实，并非常严肃的看待这个事实： 一些词比其它的词用途广这个事实。
Ogden 先生和一群很有能力助手用了7年的时间 (1925-32) 通过对一个词一个词的比较来测试英语一个一个单词的使用能力。结果就出现了基本英语这个系统。
Well, Basic came about by taking that fact seriously -- the fact that some words are of very much more use than others.
Mr. Ogden and a very able group of helpers went on for seven years. (1925-32) testing out the powers of English words in comparison with one another. The outcome was Basic.
很自然，设计基本英语的时候他们必须考虑很多因素。词是用来做什么，使用者是谁，在什么情况下使用。这是很复杂的问题，纳入考虑的不单单是英语语言所做所为，还考虑到其他主要语言的所做所为。但是，关键的问题是英语的这些词在替代其他词汇的功能方面能走多远。通过对每一个单词的尝试，把每个单词所能表达的东西放到别的单词上来表达，答案就出来了 – 数量有限的一列词汇，基本英语词汇表就诞生了。
Naturally they had to take into account a very great number of things. Of use -- for what, by whom, under what conditions? This is a very complex question, taking in not only what the English language does but what the other chief languages do. But the key question was this: How far are the words in English able to take over one another's work? The answer came by attempting for every English word to put what it might say in other words -- the words on a limited list. That list became the Basic English list .
这儿插一句，说一说指导这些词汇择取的原因。这些词在英语里面不必是最常用的词（850个中的500是在最常用之列）。
英语里面最常用的10个词是：the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I.他们占了我们所有阅读词汇的四分之一。很自然，在基本英语里这些词是首先学习的。但是他们被排在前面不是因为他们最常用而是因为他们最有用。不是因为使用频率高是因为用处多用处大。
But first we'll go on and say a little more, still in Basic; on the reasons guiding the selection of the Basic word list. These words are not necessarily the most frequent words in English, though 500 of the 850 words of Basic are among the most frequent words there are. All the Basic words which any teacher will be teaching first are very frequent; For example, the 10 most frequent words in English are the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I. (Among them, they makeup a fourth part of all our reading.) Well, naturally enough all' these words come very early in the teaching of Basic. But they don't come early because they are frequent They come early because they are necessary（必要性）, because they do so much work in the English language. And they are not necessary because they are frequent（不是因为频率高是因为用处多用处大）. That is putting the cart before the horse. It's the other way round. These words are frequent because they are necessary, because it's not possible to do very much without them. That is not to say that all frequently used words are necessary. Far from it.
书归正传。（先说重要的。重要的先说。）把用途最多的词和用处最多的表达法放到前面学习是基本英语的指导思想。
例如：Chair这个词很常用但没有在基本英语词汇之列，为什么？因为还有一个词，seat 表达同样的意思，但用途更广。例如我们可以说take a seat / be seated（请坐）, 还可以这样用，"This is a room seating 150（容纳）," 或者 "Seating herself, she said, 'Please be seated.'" 。seat也可以表达这些词的意思： settees, couches, settles, thrones, stalls, divans, hassocks, tripods, taborets, woolsacks等等。
First things first. Put the most necessary words and ways of saying things first -- that is the chief idea of Basic. You will -- if you go through, say, Learning the English Language1 -- see nothing very strange. What's chiefly to be noted is that certain very common and frequent words are not there. For example, chair. Why isn't it there? Isn't it a word of very great use? Certainly it is -- but there is another English word of even greater use which does almost all the things the word chair does, and does more things as well. It is seat -- covering chairs, and all the other things on which we may take a seat and then be seated, coveting settees, couches, settles, thrones, stalls, divans, hassocks, tripods, taborets, woolsacks, and the rest -- to make use of some words which like chair are not in Basic. Seat in addition in Basic lets us say, for example, "This is a room seating 150," or "Seating herself, she said, 'Please be seated.'" You'll go on yourselves with the other uses of this word.
丘吉尔说过：“基本英语不是设计来给英语国家的人之间使用的。”
There is no point in having people who know the rest of English talk Basic to one another. Winston Churchill put that very well in the House of Commons on November 4, 1943: "Basic English is not intended for use among English-speaking people. . . . I have tried to explain that people are quite purblind who discuss this matter as if Basic English were a substitute for the English language.'
Another queer idea is that Basic and the rest of English are somehow two separate languages with some sort of barrier between them. It is not so of course; the essential words of Basic are the essential words of all English -- the very same words used in the very same ways.
学习掌握了基本英语的学生很容易延伸到其他英语领域 - 英语语言文学的领域。
因为这些基本词汇能做大多数的工作，其他的词可以用它们很容易地来解释。《通用基础英语字典》（The General Basic English Dictionary ）的两万多的词汇都是用这850个基本词汇来定义的。
There is good evidence now that students of Basic do in fact go on to the rest of English -- to literary English -- much more successfully than students who start in on more old-fashioned lines. And there are reasons for that. One is, that the Basic words, because they are the words that will do the most work, are the words with which other English words can be most easily explained. The General Basic English Dictionary defines 20,000 and more English words in the Basic 850.
这时候你会觉得学英语的学生就应该首先学习这样的词汇而不是文学词汇。这似乎是个共识。但滑稽的事情经常发生在教育界，在表达大火扑灭了的时候，学生会说“The conflagration is extinguished.”而不会是“The fire is out. They have put the fire out”。老师似乎只教学生前一种，文学语言了，学生日常交流反而有困难。
You would think that students of English would learn the most useful words rather than the literary words first. That sounds like common sense. But funny things happen in the teaching of English.
"The gonflagration eess eggstinguished"
Well, there you do have two languages: Basic English -- "'The fire is out. They have put the fire out"; literary English -- "The conflagration is extinguished." It seemed as though our Japanese had only been "taught" the second. Basic would have helped him to keep nearer to the facts in this case with, "The fire is under control," which is perhaps what the use of "extinguished" meant to indicate.
观察中国，日本，印度，马来西亚多数的英语教学，你会怀疑他们教的是怎样的英语（几十年前），（现在情况也没有很多改观，多数地方依然如此）。
Anyone who has seen much of English teaching in places like China and Japan, India and Malaya, must have some doubts as to what sort of English it is likely to be -- as to how "broken" it will become in the process. 支离破碎。
That is the current situation. English of some sort will be everywhere in the classrooms of the world as soon as the war ends. On current teaching practice, years of study don't get most of the students anywhere. It's really daunting to think of the billions of boy-girl years of toil that have been and will be wasted In the absence of an introduction to English which will take them more quickly to a useful point. In this situation Basic comes forward as such an introduction -- as a way of easing the task which these countries have already voluntarily assumed.
多年时间精力的投入没有把多数学生培养出来。想想就让人吃惊，成千上万的男孩女孩正在而且还要继续在英语学习上浪费自己几年的努力，原因之一就是缺乏一个能使英语迅速入门的并能很快将他们带入英语使用层面的东西。在这种状况下，基本英语系统出现了，它恰恰能够弥补这个不足，能够使得孩子们英语学习变得容易且卓有成效。
基本英语词汇表里的300多个单词可以是规则动词，但在基本英语只被用作名词。基本英语系统把动词限定在了16个单词，另加两个辅助动词 may 和 will上。这样做就使得英语教和学大大的简化了。
=============
看一看这些基本动词。16个基本动词中的12个，其主要意义是描述动作的，是可以看得到的（可视行为）。它们是：
Come（来） Go（去） Give（给） Get（得到）
Put （放） Take（拿） Keep（留） Let（让）
Make （做） Say（说） See（看见） Send（送）
另外的四个动词是：
seem, be, do, have,
最后两个情态动词：
may, will
=============
On the Basic word list appear more than 300 words which might be regular verbs but which in Basic are used only as nouns. Basic confines itself to 16 verbs only, and the auxiliaries may and will. The reason for this is the immense simplification in teaching that can thereby be obtained. We can concentrate on these in any case necessity verbs, as we can by no other plan. First things first is the principle of Basic. 重要的事情先来, 要事先办，先说重要的，先学重要的
If you study the teaching texts of Basic, either Learning the English Language or The Basic Way to English, you will see how the principle works out in practice. Learning the English Language as the course developed in Massachusetts and Washington Adult Civic Education Classes. The Basic Way was the product of experience in India and Africa. A First Book of English2 was the product of Chinese classrooms. Similarly C.K. Ogden's Basic Step by Step and Mme. Litvinov's adaptation of it to Russian conditions are designed for yet other learning needs. There is a wide range of design in the Basic texts for teaching foreign students. No one picking up one of them should suppose that is the only way in which Basic may be presented. Basic indeed, through the very compactness of the material to be taught, has made experimentation in grading -- in the order in which points are taught -- relatively easy. And the key to this compactness is in the reduction of the verbs.
（看一看这些基本动词。16个基本动词中的12个，其主要意义是描述的动作是可以看得到的（可视行为）。它们是：
Consider these Basic verbs for a moment. Twelve of the sixteen in their key senses, the senses that are taught first, describe visible actions. The are:
|
|
Come（来） |
Go（去） |
Give（给） |
Get（得到） |
|
|
Put （放） |
Take（拿） |
Keep（留） |
Let（让） |
|
|
Make （做） |
Say（说） |
See（看见） |
Send（送） |
）
这些动词的主要意义和使用情形就先教授给学生。因为这些单词描述的是可视行为，涉及这些动词的句子所说的意思可以看得到，说句子的时候还可以表演这些动作，学生容易学习和掌握。当然，除了这些基本意义外，这些动词还有数不清的其他用法，基本英语不是把它们一一覆盖，而是首先教授这些可视动作的基本意义的用法，然后，在一个设计仔细的，有先后次序的控制程序下，在可视动作基本意思掌握牢固的情况下，其他的用途，那些其他众多的用法在上下文的提示中就都能被学生完全理解了。
Ogden把所有的意思都过滤了一遍，过滤出了那些不被理解的用法，那些称为惯用语, 成语类的东西。然后他将其分为需要保留的和不需要的，剩下的需要保留的就很有限了。
这些研究工作的所有成果都记录在了一本称之为基本词汇（The Basic Words ）的小书里。这本书是词汇分析的独特产物。这个结果，对于教与学来说，就是缩减了的缩减 - 简化了的简化。不但是词汇和语法结构缩减到了最低限度，这些词汇及其短语的使用范畴也同样缩减到了最大限度。
Because these verbs describe visible actions, what a. sentence using one of them means can be seen as it is said. The action can be performed as the sentence is pronounced. These are the most eminently demonstrable general verbs in the language. And, of course, these demonstrable uses describing visible actions are taught first. Academic critics of Basic sometimes so wildly astray here. These verbs, as we all know, have innumerable uses. Basic doesn't for a moment attempt to teach them all. It teaches first the visible action uses; then, in a carefully controlled order, the other uses which, if the visible action senses, the key senses, have been properly grasped, are fully intelligible in context. Ogden went through all the senses and sieved out the uses that aren't intelligible. These are just brute facts of the language, sometimes called idioms. Then he sorted these out into those needed for coverage and those not needed. Those needed are very few.
The result of all this work is recorded in The Basic Words -- a little book that is the outcome of a unique piece of analytic lexicography. The result is -- for teaching purposes -- a simplification within a simplification（缩减了的缩减 - 简化了的简化）. 不但是词汇缩减到了最低限度，这些词汇及其短语的使用范畴也同样进行了限制。Not only are the words and constructions 语法结构of Basic cut down to a minimum but the ranges of meaning of its words and the recommended phrases are similarly pruned down and limited. Perhaps this is a subtle point. It's important though. Surprisingly enough, most of those who make academic comments on Basic seem never to have heard of it or to have had The Basic Words in their hands.
将动词缩减到16个是基本英语最令人吃惊的地方，正是它，才使得基本英语成为可能。它是基本英语新颖和独特的地方。
This reduction to 16 verbs is the most astonishing thing about Basic. It made Basic possible. It is the really new and original thing about Basic. You will not be surprised, therefore, if it is the point at which routine minds aim their attacks. Some have actually said that it would be easier for a foreign learner -- who already knew and could use the words put and together -- to learn a new word, combine, than to learn to say and understand the phrase put together! You'll agree that an academic opposition reduced to this is not very formidable.
需要指出的是基本英语里面的东西，学习平常英语的学生也是必学的。他们学习combine（合起）的时候也不忽略 ‘put’‘together’，（合起）；他们学习ascend（上升）的时候也不忽略 ‘go’ and ‘up’（上升）， 基本英语做的就是，首先认识到这一点，然后透彻的教授这些基本的东西，并迅速的使用这些基本的东西。
The point to note, however, is that the Basic verbs and the other words they combine with in Basic (as defined for teaching purposes in The Basic Words) are words any student of English has to learn, whether he comes into it through Basic or not. We don't avoid put and together by teaching combine. We don't avoid go and up by teaching ascend, and to on. These words and phrases are indispensable for even a modest understanding of English anyhow. What Basic does is to recognize this, teach them thoroughly, and use them.
We give you all these samples of this objection lest you may think we have to do with one solitary product of unregulated speculation. The facts are that English-speaking people can easily learn Basic in a couple of days. It has been done in a morning. Large classes of English speakers have learned it in half a dozen sessions. Work through a few of the exercises in this handbook and prove it for yourself.
To sum up:
1. Basic is not a pidgin English. 皮钦语，混杂语言，洋泾浜英语
2. There is no barrier between it and the rest of English. Only a specialist can tell when a speaker goes into it or comes out of it.
3. It is not intended to take the place of full English, nor will it.
4. It is not intended to take the place of anyone's mother tongue, nor will it.
5. It is no threat whatever to the cultural or linguistic independence (or any other sort of independence) of any country whatsoever.
On the contrary, its effect would be to free more time for other languages.
6. Basic is not harder for foreign learners than a similar number of other English words.
On the contrary, it is far easier.
7. And finally, it is not hard at all for English speakers.
Basic, after all, was designed by Mr. Ogden to be an international language, and it is naturally there that its greatest held of use is to be seen.
* The other four verbs in Basic are: be, do, have ,seem.
