In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [46]
Winston Churchill, himself a tireless advocate of plain language, was a fan of Basic English and made efforts to promote it. He thought it could help create a different kind of empire, one based not on “taking away other people's provinces or land or grinding them down in exploitation” but on a shared language. He encouraged the BBC to take it to the airwaves and teach it far and wide.
He also appealed to President Roosevelt to join the cause of Basic English. Roosevelt promised to look into the matter, but he couldn't resist teasing that Churchill's inspiring speech about offering his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” to his country may have been less effective if he “had been able to offer the British people only blood, work, eye water and face water, which I understand is the best that Basic English can do with five famous words.”
For all they did to argue for its virtues, neither Churchill nor Ogden actually used Basic English in their own writings. They rather took luxurious advantage of English vocabulary. But Ogden didn't really intend for Basic English to replace full English. It was to serve as a second, auxiliary language, a utilitarian lingua franca. He advertised two other benefits. For foreigners, it would serve as an easy entrée into fuller English. For English speakers, it would serve as “an apparatus for the development of clarity of thought and expression.”
I'm not so sure Basic English fit the bill on either point. Although sometimes the Basic English version is clearer (“First, God made the heaven and the earth.” I like that. It's snappy), at other times it seems to strangle itself on its own restrictions:
Seven and eighty years have gone by from the day when our fathers gave to this land a new nation—a nation which came to birth in the thought that all men are free, a nation given up to the idea that all men are equal.
“Came to birth in the thought that all men are free”? How does that clarify things? And if you don't speak English, how are you supposed to know that “given up to” means “dedicated to”? Just because you are familiar with the “operator” words that Ogden expected to bear the brunt of so much meaning, you don't necessarily have any idea what they mean when put together. It is precisely those words, and the huge number of idioms they participate in, that make English such a headache for the non-native speaker. You haven't really solved much by replacing “happen” with “come about,” “tease” with “make sport,” or “intend” with “have a mind to.”
In 1943, Churchill touted Basic English in a speech at Harvard, and soon the reporters were at Ogden's doorstep. He received them wearing a mask and, over the course of the interview, exited and entered the room through different doors, each time wearing a different mask. This behavior was a symptom of his generally irreverent attitude and what friends called his “impish humor.” He wore masks on other occasions, explaining that when the speaker wears a mask, the listener is forced to pay attention to the content of the speech. Whatever the content of his speech that day, he did nothing to dispel the impression that Basic English was kind of a kooky idea. When Churchill left office in 1945, officials at the BBC suggested that Basic English be left “on a high shelf in a dark corner.”
Ogden's plan wasn't without merit. The promotion of plain language is a fine idea and I'm all for it. A simplified form of English is clearly a good thing for someone trying to learn the language. In 1959, two years after Ogden's death, the Voice of America began broadcasting news stories in something they called Special English, and these programs are still popular today in non-English-speaking countries all over