yingyudidida的博客
duhduhda
正常英語Normal English。指平時大家學習使用的英語。
基本英語Basic English。指從正常英語中精簡提煉後的核心英語
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. 核心基礎(基本)英語是做什麽的，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（常規，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.
基本英語 vs 正常英語
基本英語是一個正常英語的簡易係統。這個係統擇取了數量盡可能少的但其綜合能力卻非常強，能完全勝任日常英語交流的那一部分詞匯。掌握了這部分詞匯及其相配的言語係統，一個人無論其興趣在那裏無論興趣多廣，無論是在商業，貿易，工業，科學，醫療等生活的任何層麵，都可以用這些詞來表述其領域涉獵的幾乎所有的日常交流的話題。
Basic is a very small-scale language to have such a range of uses. It has only 850 head words (領軍單詞) 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.
基本英語涉及850個領軍單詞。這些單詞在正常英語裏變化，在基本英語裏也不缺少。例如take是一個基本詞匯，它的變化形式也包括：I take, he takes, he is taking, he took, and it was taken 。I 也是是一個基本詞匯，它的變化形式也有：I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours，同正常英語一樣。
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, （基本詞匯表裏隻有“I”，沒有其他的，還有mine,是另一個意思）。 and so on as in full English.
與基本英語詞匯同步的基本英語語法規則比正常英語的無盡的語法規則少的多。語法規則選取簡單扼要 – 目的是利於學習者的掌握。但規則還是原來的規則，沒有任何改變，隻是對其數量進行了限製。
基本語法規則的選擇基於兩個考量：（1）結構正規但簡單，盡量減少學習者的學習麻煩，（2）數量限製但不損及基本規則的正常運作。 這是Ogden先生一貫主張。
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.
對於選詞的考量，我們都同意有些詞的用途比另些詞多，例如：do 就比extrapolate 用途多。還有，有些詞或多或少都表達同樣的意思，例如：make （製作） 和 fabricate（製作）, manufacture（生產）, contrive（設計，做到）, constitute（組成，建立）; produce（生產）。 但make 卻比其他的那些詞用途多。我們就是挑選do，make，這樣的詞來學。
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.
關鍵點就在這兒。基本英語的誕生就是基於這個事實，並非常嚴肅的看待這個事實： 一些詞比其它的詞用途廣這個事實。
Ogden 先生和一群很有能力助手用了7年的時間 (1925-32) 通過對一個詞一個詞的比較來測試英語一個一個單詞的使用能力。結果就出現了基本英語這個係統。
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，設計基本英語的時候他們必須考慮很多因素。詞是用來做什麽，使用者是誰，在什麽情況下使用。這是很複雜的問題，納入考慮的不單單是英語語言所做所為，還考慮到其他主要語言的所做所為。但是，關鍵的問題是英語的這些詞在替代其他詞匯的功能方麵能走多遠。通過對每一個單詞的嚐試，把每個單詞所能表達的東西放到別的單詞上來表達，答案就出來了 – 數量有限的一列詞匯，基本英語詞匯表就誕生了。
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 .
這兒插一句，說一說指導這些詞匯擇取的原因。這些詞在英語裏麵不必是最常用的詞（850個中的500是在最常用之列）。
英語裏麵最常用的10個詞是：the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I.他們占了我們所有閱讀詞匯的四分之一。很自然，在基本英語裏這些詞是首先學習的。但是他們被排在前麵不是因為他們最常用而是因為他們最有用。不是因為使用頻率高是因為用處多用處大。
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（不是因為頻率高是因為用處多用處大）. 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.
書歸正傳。（先說重要的。重要的先說。）把用途最多的詞和用處最多的表達法放到前麵學習是基本英語的指導思想。
例如：Chair這個詞很常用但沒有在基本英語詞匯之列，為什麽？因為還有一個詞，seat 表達同樣的意思，但用途更廣。例如我們可以說take a seat / be seated（請坐）, 還可以這樣用，"This is a room seating 150（容納）," 或者 "Seating herself, she said, 'Please be seated.'" 。seat也可以表達這些詞的意思： 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.
丘吉爾說過：“基本英語不是設計來給英語國家的人之間使用的。”
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.
學習掌握了基本英語的學生很容易延伸到其他英語領域 - 英語語言文學的領域。
因為這些基本詞匯能做大多數的工作，其他的詞可以用它們很容易地來解釋。《通用基礎英語字典》（The General Basic English Dictionary ）的兩萬多的詞匯都是用這850個基本詞匯來定義的。
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.
這時候你會覺得學英語的學生就應該首先學習這樣的詞匯而不是文學詞匯。這似乎是個共識。但滑稽的事情經常發生在教育界，在表達大火撲滅了的時候，學生會說“The conflagration is extinguished.”而不會是“The fire is out. They have put the fire out”。老師似乎隻教學生前一種，文學語言了，學生日常交流反而有困難。
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.
觀察中國，日本，印度，馬來西亞多數的英語教學，你會懷疑他們教的是怎樣的英語（幾十年前），（現在情況也沒有很多改觀，多數地方依然如此）。
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. 支離破碎。
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.
多年時間精力的投入沒有把多數學生培養出來。想想就讓人吃驚，成千上萬的男孩女孩正在而且還要繼續在英語學習上浪費自己幾年的努力，原因之一就是缺乏一個能使英語迅速入門的並能很快將他們帶入英語使用層麵的東西。在這種狀況下，基本英語係統出現了，它恰恰能夠彌補這個不足，能夠使得孩子們英語學習變得容易且卓有成效。
基本英語詞匯表裏的300多個單詞可以是規則動詞，但在基本英語隻被用作名詞。基本英語係統把動詞限定在了16個單詞，另加兩個輔助動詞 may 和 will上。這樣做就使得英語教和學大大的簡化了。
=============
看一看這些基本動詞。16個基本動詞中的12個，其主要意義是描述動作的，是可以看得到的（可視行為）。它們是：
Come（來） Go（去） Give（給） Get（得到）
Put （放） Take（拿） Keep（留） Let（讓）
Make （做） Say（說） See（看見） Send（送）
另外的四個動詞是：
seem, be, do, have,
最後兩個情態動詞：
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. 重要的事情先來, 要事先辦，先說重要的，先學重要的
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.
（看一看這些基本動詞。16個基本動詞中的12個，其主要意義是描述的動作是可以看得到的（可視行為）。它們是：
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（來） |
Go（去） |
Give（給） |
Get（得到） |
|
|
Put （放） |
Take（拿） |
Keep（留） |
Let（讓） |
|
|
Make （做） |
Say（說） |
See（看見） |
Send（送） |
）
這些動詞的主要意義和使用情形就先教授給學生。因為這些單詞描述的是可視行為，涉及這些動詞的句子所說的意思可以看得到，說句子的時候還可以表演這些動作，學生容易學習和掌握。當然，除了這些基本意義外，這些動詞還有數不清的其他用法，基本英語不是把它們一一覆蓋，而是首先教授這些可視動作的基本意義的用法，然後，在一個設計仔細的，有先後次序的控製程序下，在可視動作基本意思掌握牢固的情況下，其他的用途，那些其他眾多的用法在上下文的提示中就都能被學生完全理解了。
Ogden把所有的意思都過濾了一遍，過濾出了那些不被理解的用法，那些稱為慣用語, 成語類的東西。然後他將其分為需要保留的和不需要的，剩下的需要保留的就很有限了。
這些研究工作的所有成果都記錄在了一本稱之為基本詞匯（The Basic Words ）的小書裏。這本書是詞匯分析的獨特產物。這個結果，對於教與學來說，就是縮減了的縮減 - 簡化了的簡化。不但是詞匯和語法結構縮減到了最低限度，這些詞匯及其短語的使用範疇也同樣縮減到了最大限度。
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（縮減了的縮減 - 簡化了的簡化）. 不但是詞匯縮減到了最低限度，這些詞匯及其短語的使用範疇也同樣進行了限製。Not only are the words and constructions 語法結構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.
將動詞縮減到16個是基本英語最令人吃驚的地方，正是它，才使得基本英語成為可能。它是基本英語新穎和獨特的地方。
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語裏麵的東西，學習平常英語的學生也是必學的。他們學習combine（合起）的時候也不忽略 ‘put’‘together’，（合起）；他們學習ascend（上升）的時候也不忽略 ‘go’ and ‘up’（上升）， 基本英語做的就是，首先認識到這一點，然後透徹的教授這些基本的東西，並迅速的使用這些基本的東西。
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. 皮欽語，混雜語言，洋涇浜英語
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.
