Basic English - A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar

Ogden, C.K.

Published by Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd - London, 1938

About this Item

Dark blue cloth quarter-bound to spine over beige paper on boards. Paper title label affixed to spine and titling and price printed on front - Net 2/6 Net. Small book is tight, square, relatively sharp-cornered and free of major flaws and markings inside and out. Fold-out map in front has small closed tear - front cover has minor stains. Inside is spotless. Close to near fine, but Very Good+ at least. Rare book - not ex-library, purchased from the Hamlin Estate - Hannibal Hamlin was Vice President of USA under Abraham Lincoln. His descendants were academics and politicians themselves. Important book too in the development of computer science and other fields - Basic English (British American Scientific International and Commercial English) is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a second language. Basic English is, in essence, a simplified subset of regular English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards of Harvard University and Charles Kay Ogden of the University of Cambridge in England. The design of Basic English drew heavily on the semiotic theory put forward by Ogden and Richards in their book The Meaning of Meaning. Ogden's Basic, and the concept of a simplified English, gained its greatest publicity just after the Allied victory in World War II as a means for world peace. He was convinced that the world needed to gradually eradicate minority languages and use as much as possible only one, English in either a simple or complete form. A widely known 1933 book on this is a science fiction work on history up to the year 2106 titled "The Shape of Things to Come" by H. G. Wells. In this work, Basic English is the inter-language of the future world, a world in which after long struggles a global authoritarian government manages to unite humanity and force everyone to learn it as a second language. From the Psyche Miniatures, General Series, No. 29. A very rare book.

Seller Inventory # blb05829

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Basic English - A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar
• Publisher: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd - London
• Publication Date: 1938
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 5th or later Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science
  • Languages
  • Philosophy