{"id":12241,"date":"2009-07-13T11:49:50","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T18:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2009\/07\/13\/special-english.html"},"modified":"2009-07-13T11:49:50","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T18:49:50","slug":"special-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2009\/07\/13\/special-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Special English"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had previously heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Basic_English\">Basic English<\/a>, a proposed simplified English with an 850-word core vocabulary. (In case you're curious, a Basic English website has some <a href=\"http:\/\/ogden.basic-english.org\/readings.html\">examples<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>But I hadn't previously known that Basic English is just one example of a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Controlled_natural_language\">controlled natural language<\/a>, a subset of a natural language \"obtained by restricting the grammar and vocabulary in order to reduce or eliminate ambiguity and complexity.\"<\/p>\n<p>And I also hadn't known about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/specialenglish\/about_special_english.cfm\">Special English<\/a>, used by some Voice of America radio broadcasts to make them easier to understand by non-native English speakers. VOA has been broadcasting in Special English for almost forty years now.<\/p>\n<p>Special English has a 1500-word core vocabulary. To quote the VOA site:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Special English writers use short, simple sentences that contain only one idea. They use active voice.  They do not use idioms.<\/p>\n<p>Special English broadcasters read at a slower pace, about two-thirds the speed of standard English.  This helps people learning English hear each word clearly.  It also helps people who are fluent English speakers understand complex subjects.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I think it's a neat idea, especially because these days VOA also posts corresponding written versions of the Special English broadcasts on their website, so listeners can compare the spoken and written versions, which a couple of listener letters on the abovelinked About page indicate can be helpful to people learning English.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had previously heard of Basic English, a proposed simplified English with an 850-word core vocabulary. (In case you&#8217;re curious, a Basic English website has some examples.) But I hadn&#8217;t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languages"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}