Talk:Basic English

What we really need is to apply the rules of grammar of Basic English to the 2000 words required to make up a full defining vocabulary. See talk:Simple English

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Suggestion for new boilerplate, 24 October 03: On every article whose title is one of the 850 Basic English words we add a header:

This is a Basic English word.

-- I assume users will often find this kind of marker helpful -- RJ092191.user.veloxzone.com.br

Yes, good idea. We should do the same for the most common 1000 words and 2000 words.

So you want to do it for the BE list, the 1000 word list, and the 2000 word list? Where does it end? What if I want to do it for the Spache list as well. See my comments on Wikipedia talk:Standard messages. This is not a good idea. We are not the "Basic English" Wikipedia. Angela.

I was just writing a suggestion, but i've deleted, because i've realised something. We aren't meant to have pages for the BE words.

No, not the "words", but if the name of an article happens to be the same as a BE (or defining vocabulary or Spache word) we should say so, as it marks a very basic concept every English reader must know. Mostly these will be disambiguation pages or those explaining complex alternative uses, e.g. boot, net, web, run. When you see on the screen of the computer at the school which you get 15 minutes/week on, it matters if you understand "no boot device", or can figure out what it is to "run" a program vs. to run in a soccer game. Likewise to catch fish in net vs. to get email over it. We forget how confusing this metaphor is, and how mixed (you access a non-spider web usually via the net, but the HTML files may be on your boot not data drive etc.). Imagine how confusing that lingo, which EVERYONE uses, ESPECIALLY new EN users, if we don't write at least those disambiguation articles. There won't be more than about 100 of them though. What Tango says here is exactly right:

The idea is everyone who comes to the site knows BE and we only have to explain NON BE words. The idea of being a dictionary was never meant to include definitions for the 1000/2000 words. -- Tango

That's exactly right. Those are the ONLY words we CAN'T put those definitions in for! There is enough to do defining those > the 2000 and getting good articles in place to properly introduce subjects under the proper Full English names, so they can find the correct Full articles (in any language).

"We aren't meant to have pages for the BE words. The idea is everyone who comes to the site knows BE and we only have to explain NON BE words. The idea of being a dictionary was never meant to include definitions for the 1000/2000 words." -- I am new here, so I have to ask: Who says so? Can you point me to a discussion? (I am not asking this to argue, but because if there is a Standard Operating Procedure about this I haven't seen it. Thanks.) -- RJ092191.user.veloxzone.

This is at Simple English Wikipedia policy. It's one of those points where we must have a markedly different rule than the Full wikis.

Also -- "The idea is everyone who comes to the site knows BE and we only have to explain NON BE words." -- I say again: The users, contributors, and editors of this SEWiki are de facto anybody who can get to a WWW-capable terminal, can use it, and stumbles across this site. We *cannot* and presumably *should not try to* control "who comes to this site". -- RJ092191.user.veloxzone.

Control, no, make a few simple assumptions about, yes.

The assumptions are at Simple English Users. As it stands, it is a list of all non-English-speaking people on Earth, with no attempt to guess how likely they are to get to a WWW-capable terminal and this website. It would be more useful for someone to figure that out, and calculate the likelihood of different types of users getting here for help, than to continue arguing about being a full dictionary that we don't have skills or talent to write.

I can't remember where it was discussed, probably SimpleTalk, but i seem to remember the conclusion was (although most of it was made before i got here) that we needed to be a dictionary as well as an encyclopedia so we could define the non-simple words that we would need to use in articles from time to time. There was never any intention of making definitions for the simple words. We may not want to control who comes here, but we must have an intended audience. In my view, that is people who already have a knowledge of simple english. We are not here to teach people english. If we want to help people learn english, we need to completely change the way we work. -- Tango

I think the discussion is at Talk:Simple English Wikipedia policy now.

We are however "teaching English" if we start with Basic English or a defining vocabulary and then define idiom and technical term up from that. We just aren't teaching Basic English! There are far better programs and systems to do that.

operator?

Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.

Since "operator" with a relevant linguistic meaning is not in this Wikipedia or in the normal English one or any of the dictionaries i consulted, it should be changed to something comprehensible and correct. --80.186.159.233 12:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Rules of Word Use Recommendation

Under this heading, Rule 8 is:

Make combined words from two nouns (for example "milkman"

or "wordend") or a noun and a directive (sundown).

I'm new to Simple English Wikipedia, but as an ESL teacher, I really don't like making nonexistent words (like "wordend") to explain things. Would those with more experience here agree that we can take out "wordend" in its two occurrences? (There's one use above this rule.) --DBlomgren 15:43, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur with DBlomgren, this should be changed. We aren't supposed to be inventing new words here. Blockinblox 00:23, 6 November 2006 (UTC)