Culture or Common Sense?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 235, 24 December 1943, Page 4

Culture or Common Sense?

= THE historian whose style most nearly resembles Gibbon’s is an advocate of Basic English. His speech at Harvard has made it an issue in world politics, and lest we should suppose that he spoke on impulse, the newspapers assure us that a Cabinet Committee under Mr. Amery has begun to _ investigate its claims.’-Comment by "New Statesman" on Mr. Churchill’s speech at Harvard. HAT speech was made in September, and excited comment all over the world. But in September Italy surrended, and so many other things happened about the same

time on the war fronts that the discussion was overlooked and soon died down. Now it has flared up again, and we have been asked by several readers to tell them what Basic English is, and what claims are made for it. We begin by quoting from an article in a recent issue of Life, written by Lincoln Barnett. Of the uncounted radio listeners who heard Winston Churchill’s address at Cambridge a few weeks ago, it is improbable that more than an erudite fraction understood his. reference to Basic English. Educators, philologists and research scholars in China and Latin America knew what he was talking about. So did the Rockefeller Foundation, which has helped finance the teaching of Basic English in foreign countries for a decade. So did instructors in Massachusetts’ civic _education classes, where Basic English is taught to adult aliens. So did Ivy Low Litvinoff, who edited Basic English textbooks now widely used in Russia. So did Walt Disney, who made an experimental short for Basic English teachers, But a sample poll of a reasonably well-in-formed group in New York City *revealed that a majority believed, prior to Churchill’s address, that Basic English was the title of some book akin to Fowler’s Modern English Usage or a @rade-school primer in the elements of syntax and grammar. As a result of the Prime Minister’s utterance, additional thousands are noW aware that Basic English is a proposed international language-or as its exponents prefer to call it, a supra-national language-for the communication of all men on the face of a rapidly shrinking globe. It is not intended to supersede Portuguese or Bengali or any other of mankind’s 1700 languages. Its advocates hold nothing in common with the linguistic imperialism of those Nazi savants who awaited the day when English would become "a minor Germanic dialect of no world importance." They see Basic as a secondary or auxiliary language for men in all lands-scientists, business men, scholars-whose activities transcend national boundaries. Other Claimants to World Support Everyone of course knows that there are several so-called international languages in existence at the present time. The best known in New Zealand | is Esperanto, which has study groups in most of our larger cities. Others have made no progress here, but are well established in America and EuropeIdo, Novial, and Nulango, for example.

But these are artificial languages-syn-thetic products which make -no pretence to be anything else. No one speaks them now: they have no literature and no tradition. English, on the other hand, is spoken by 200 to 300 millions of people. It is the acquired or administrative tongue of regions in which the population is at least 500 millionscompared with 120 millions who speak Russian, 100 million who speak German or Spanish, 80 million who speak Japanese, and perhaps 75 million who speak French. To quote Life again: Basic English is to English as metal is to ore. It is a language within a language, whose existence was first discovered 23 years ago by an academic team of Cambridge Fellows mamed Charles Kay Ogden and, Ivor Armstrong Richards. While collaborating On a ‘book entitled The Meaning of Meaning, they noticed, in analysing and defining words and idioms, that certain key words tended to reappear again and again in their definitions. Before long, they became convinced that with a given number of these indispensable analytical words, any other word could be defined and any thought, idea or statement fully and intelligently expressed, Fascinated by this promise; Ogden went to work with a determination to strip English down to its irreducible skeletal structure. A decade later, his task was done. From the 500,000 words in big unabridged dictionaries, from the 83,000 in desk dictionaries, from the 20,000 in the vocabulary of the average wellinformed man, from the 8000 in common everyday use, from the 2000 in the vocabulary of the normal three-year-old child, he evolved Basic English-a quintessential language of 850 words, capable of reproduction on a single printed page. In Basic’s tiny lexicon 600 words are names of things ( ouns), 150 are the names of qualities (or adjectives), and 100 are "operations" (structural words which put the others to work). In no event did Ogden put in a word simply because of its frequent use in daily talk or writing. And it may be noted that Basic’s words are not necessarily little words. They are those which say most, do the hardest work, and go farthest across the clouded and uncertain waters of their mother-tongue, But not all are general, far-ranging words. Some, like organisation, government, punishment and (continued on next page)

Basic English Becomes World Politics

(continued from previous page) advertisement, have less covering power. These have a place in Basic because it would be hard, if not impossible, to do without them. Ogden’s great and surprising discovery was the fact that English may be clearly, smoothly and expertly used with a very small number of those names of acts and operations listed in schoolbooks as "‘verbs."" In the normal talk of most persons of education, about 4000 common ones come into play. To take the place of these 4000, Basic has 18 whose power to do the work of all the others seems past till one goes into their range of sense expansion in detail. These 18 are: come, get, give, go, keep, let, make, put, seem, take, be, do, » Say, see, send, may and will. When these elastic little servants are used, separately or joined in word structures like give up, put off, get over, they say everything normally covered by more ogy tes Latin-rooted ornaments of the language. ere is mo exchange of common knowledge, news, or everyday opinion which may not be made clear with Basic’s 850 words. And quality of writing is not over-greatly damaged by its narrow limits. The reading of it may give no more trouble than the reading of these last three paragraphs which-up to the word aenarenne-aee been written in Basic Engish. With the single exception of Chinese, English is the only major language from which a basic elixir can thus be distilled. Professor

Richards (now at Harvard, and Basic’s most active exponent in the U.S.), estimates that at least 2000 words would be required to create any kind of a useful basic French or Spanish. Tortuously inflected languages like German and Japanese would demand even more. The reasons why English-richest, most intellectual, and perhaps most delicate of all langu-ages-contains this nner voice, rest in the history of the British Isles, "Seldom Awkward, Often Eloquent" Although the chief claim made for Basic is that it would enable people all, over the world to communicate with one another in a relatively-rich and easily-acquired medium, enthusiastic advocates say that it need never be awkward and can often be eloquent. The fundamental rule, they say, is that bad English is bad Basic, good English good Basic. And to show what the possibilities are in eloquence and dignity, Life gives the Basic version of Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, which we reprint elsewhere, along with the original, for purposes of comparison. There is, in fact, a library of Basicworks by Shaw, Stevenson, Swift and Tolstoy; at least one play by Shakes-

’ peare; and best known of all, a Basie New Testament. Here is the Lord’s Prayer in Basic (from St. Matthew): Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Let your kingdom come, Let your pleasure be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day bread for our needs. And make us free of our debts, as we have made those free who are in debt to us. And let us not be put to the test, but keep us safe trom the Evil One. Arguments Against So much for the advocates. Let us now return to the New Statesman for some irreverence: With one half of the claim put forward for Basic English we are in complete agreement. It is a very easy language for a foreigner to learn. Two weeks of hard work, as its inventor, ‘Mr. Ogden, reckons, might suffice, The pupil’s pronunciation might leave something to be desired. He might be tempted to translate the idioms of his mother-tongue into it, with disconcerting effects. But a quickwitted Englishman, let us say Mr. Churchill, landing, for instance, at Syracuse, would understand the first Sicilian who brought him fruit and wine with a careful little address in Basic English. Here is a good beginning. But we are not so sure that the Sicilian would understand Mr. Churchill with equal ease. All (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the foreigner has to do is to learn 850 words by heart. But Mr. Churchill disposes of, a vocabulary that may stretch to 250,000 words, We will be modest, however, and estimate it at 100,000. Now, before he left Downing Street, did the Prime Minister take the precaution of memorising the 99,150 words which he must not use? Even if he did, will they not sometimes flock unbidden to his practised tongue? He wishes to say, for example, "We will fight them on the edges of the land."? That is Basic English. But habit is strong. Before he got to the end of the sentence might not the forbidden word "beaches" slip in? Let us take at random a sentence from the Premier’s address at Harvard: ‘ Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and absorbed the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle. Mr. Churchill has a prodigious memory. He remembers, of course, that ‘twice’ does not occur, nor "life,’"’ nor "reach," nor "ocean," while "fate" is not included as a@ possible substitute for "destiny’-and so we might go on. Here is the sentence as this consummate artist might have written it to justify his reception of his doctor’s degree: Two times in my existence the long arm of history has stretched across the seas and kept all the living things and all the = of the United States in a fearful ght. The sentence is perfectly "basic," but would it earn the orator his customary meed of applause? e reader may object to his test: Mr. Churchill is no fit subject for simplification. Then let us become as little children. It shall be a nursery rhyme. "Three blind mice... ." Worse than ever. "Blind" is not allowed, nor "mouse." The little grey animals without eyes can run after the farmer’s wife, but all she had to cut off their tails with was a meat knife. We confess that we have never seen such a thing in our "existence." But let us try again with something as simple, if more classical. ‘Tiger, tiger. . . ." But neither is that animal one of the chosen. The big Indian cat will burn bright enough. We wonder what hand and what eye could make its fearful regularity. * How soon will Basic English be appointed to be read in churches? How long will its rival survive in elementary schools? We can see Lord Beaverbrook racing all the peers of Fleet Street for the honour of ducing the first Basic daily newspaper. e last phase may lie a little way ahead: the best to hope for is that it will not be in our lifetime. What publisher will hesitate, when in one language he cam count on a sale of ten million copies, and in the othergof ten thousand? The classics, we trust, will be translated: it is doubtful if they will survive in any | other form. Scholars, a few centuries hence, will collect the fragments of Mr. Churchill in the original tongue much as they try to assemble the lost bocks of Livy. Assuredly, the mighty fertilising and health-giving river a aiaat

"will flow on, and all the children of men will drink from it." But will it not taste a trifle insipid? An Answer to Criticism To show, however, that the New Statesman did not speak with the approvai of all its readers, we end with the protest of an indignant correspondent: Sir.-The comment on Basic English in today’s number of the New Statesman must be easily the most childish piece of writing the "N.S." has printed for many a moon. The writer of the article seems to suggest that Mr. Churchill speaks off the cuff on public occasions, but the general belief is that the Premier’s speeches are very carefully prepared. Certainly th2 more imposing passages are carefully laid out. When addressing an Englishspeaking audience, Mr. Churchill uses the full sweep of the language from Billingsgate upwards, but conceit for his composition would not stop him putting his meaning into Basic English if he had to speak to the world’s peoples on weighty matters. His Harvard speech is the first clear sign that Mr. Churchill is aware of the real problems confronting the world’s legislators. True, it is a surprise to find the tradition-steeped Winston Churchill starting an inquiry into an important problem in advanced internationalism, but it is also a great shock to find the New Statesman dithering and drivelling blimpishly at a shadow the approaching future is casting ahead, It is the New Statesman’s business to anticipate and control the future, not to shudder at novelty. It is silly to suggest that because, out of a sense of world citizenship and courtesy to those who are new to our tongue, we discipline ourselv2s on cccasion to 850 chosen words and turns of speech using them, that therefore the British stock using the language as a bludgeon, or a steam hammer, or a fine precision tool, or a musical instrument will die out. Advocacy of Basic is a sign of freshness of outlook, not of decadence. Probably the public utterances of no Eng-lish-speaking statesman of to-day would benefit so much from a brief training in Basic English as Mr. Churchill’s. I find his extravagant: and over-elaborate verbiage unbearable ta listen to, and always wait for the newspaper reports of his broadcasts, when I can swiftly grasp his meaning and shake it free of Gibbonish. I, myself, have found a brief study of Basic of real help in the use of language, both in the writing of verse and of accurate statement. An international language is an obvious need for world integration. Basic English may or may not be the best solution. I think it is. But whether or no, the matter is undoubtedly well worth going into, and Mr. Churchill is to be congratulated upon overcoming his first sarcastic objections and recognising that the case for Basic English is powerful and important. And surely when the coin drops in the mind of the Old Man, that.is no time for the New Statesman to get out of order? F. R. GRIFFIN,