Most frequently used words

[Lynne Murphy]

James Smith:

>Somewhere, perhaps on this list, I read or heard that
>the international version of the BBC tv news was
>constrained to use a vocabulary of only 850 different
>English words (no doubt excluding proper nouns from
>the count).
>
>First question then, is this true?

BBC World Service (on shortwave radio) used to (?) have "The News in
Basic English" as one of its program(me)s.  I had a friend in Africa
who did a wicked impression of it.  I went to their website to see if
it's still on, but if so, it's not under that name--it's probably
just listed as 'world news'.  I don't know anything about
international BBC TV news...


>Second, if, true, where can a copy of this word list
>be found?

I think it's CK Ogden's Basic English.  The word list is at:

http://www.marshallnet.com/~manor/basiceng/words.html

Incidentally, BBC World Service has English-learning resources,
including a page linking to past program(me)s about English.  Follow
the links from:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice

Lynne
--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320