Most frequently used words

[Grant Barrett]

On samedi 7 octobre 2000 16:48, Lynne Murphy
<lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK> wrote:

>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...

I could swear I heard the program in the last year, but there
was a programming reorganization and maybe it got bumped from the
schedule. I don't see anything like it on the web site, either.

To the best of my knowledge, at least in France, there is no
basic English programming on BBC Prime or BBC World though some of
the late-night Learning progarms are so simplistic that they might
be mistaken as such.

The Voice of America does a program in basic English but calls
is "Special English." The words are easy, the pace is slow and the
subject matter is carefully explained. They use a 1500-word
vocabulary.

The link to their hideously-designed web site (it jus screams:
"We had a 12-year-old do this on a Windows 3.11 computer during
his study halls!"):

http://www.voa.gov/special/

The vocabulary:

http://www.voa.gov/special/sevocab.html