Readme Notes for "SIMPLE ENGLISH" Wordlists

    Simple English = Basic English 1500 + Most Frequent 1000 words (320 additional).
    Draft of May 21, 2008


    Toolbox Files included:
      readsimple.html   13KB   (this note)
      SIMPLE.dic     44KB  - the simple English spell checking dictionary.
      SIMPLE.aff       3KB  - the Simple English affix file (suffixes) Same as en_US.aff. -commonwealth users may chose to us en_GB.aff.
      dictionary.lst     2KB  - list of languages available on your PC.
    Purpose:
    Provide a spell checking filter for use as Simple English by use with the free Open Office software suite. The vocabulary of Simple English is composed of Basic English (1500) plus the most frequent 1000 words in English. This page addresses the technical issues and electronic office aids to try to help writers using Simple English.

        OpenOffice.org is similar to M$-Office , except it is freeware, world wide, localized to many langauges, with one million downloads in the last 4 months (MS-Office has about 1.8 paying customers). OOo is a large file (95MB), or it may be ordered as a CD from one of their partners. We paid $5.50 for a copy.
        We assume you have acquired, installed and are familiar with Open Office text processing. It is similar to M$-Word, but not exactly the same. You should practice changing between the multiple langauges built-in to OOo --French, German, etc.

    TO SETUP Simple English spell checker:
    UnZip Simple.zip into a temporary folder.
    Copy SIMPLE.dic ,
      SIMPLE.aff ,   and
      dictionary.lst   into the file where you have OpenOffice.org shared dictionaries. This folder is probably:
      C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.4\share\dict\ooo . If not, search to find en_US.dic and that will be the directory to copy these three files.
      (These instructions are the same as for Basic English (en_BE.dic) for those familar with that spell checking.)
      We have to fool Open Office to use of Simple English and pretend it is an international language known to OpenOffice.org. We have chosen to pretend that Simple English is the English dialect of Zimbabwe, en_ZW.

    Start up Open Office and tell it you have a new language.
      Select Tools from the top line.
      Select Options from the bottom of the drop dowmnmenu.
      Click on Language Settings
      Select Languge Aids
        Under User-Defined Dictionaires, Select New.
        Enter name : Simple
        Select Langauge from list: English (Zimbabawe)
        Put a check mark in front of SIMPLE[English(Zimbabwe)]
        Click OK. (only once)
      You have finished adding a new language to Open Office.
      Click on Languages.
        If starting over, repeat steps 1-3, then select Languages.

      Go to the line : Default language for Documents.
        On the line   Western -- Select English (Zimbabwe). Note that it is now available to you with spell checking.
        IF you intend Simple English to be used only occationally, then select For this Document Only for testing now and you will repeat the Language step whenever you want to use Simple English (Zimbabwe) spell checking.
        IF you want Simple English to be your major language, then leave unchecked [   ] For this Document Only and your default langauge on Open Office Write will be Simple English.
        Look at Options box on the bottom of that page and be sure that these are NOT marked.
            [  ] "Check in all languages"
            [  ] "Do not mark errors".
            Click OK
        Close OpenOffice. It must be restarted to see your new language.

    TO USE:
      Start OpenOffice.org
      Select Tools on top line
      Select Language from near the top of the drop down menu.
      Select For Text from pop up menu
      Select English (Zimbabwe) from list.


    TO UNINSTALL :
    There are no registry entries. Simply delete or don't use any features that are no longer wanted. All three files are simple text files, nothing is hidden.

    DISCUSSION

    Simple English -- What is included in this version ? Basic 1500.
        Every learner of Basic English is expected to know the 850 words, the international words, six affixes (suffixes and prefixes) and complex words, plus one area of General interest with 100 words, such as Science, Business, or Verse; These are all included. Each learner also has one detailed special word list of 50 words, after that General topic of 100 words, such as Biology, Economics, or Bible. These are NOT included in Simple English. The originators of Basic also provide a learning path beyond basic Basic of 150 First Suppliment words of common plants, animals and foods and 350 Subsequent words at which point the learner should be able to continue at his own pace. These ARE included in Simple.
        Basic English is a full language for general living and works as an auxiliary international language. The limited vocabulary allows quick learning -- weeks, not years. Obviously it is an excellent first step in learning full English because it allows almost immediate immersion into daily English-speaking life. Note, Basic English is a subset of Standard English with simple rules of grammar -- there is NO unlearning required to progress to full English.
    Review : There is no standard for the vocabulary of Simple English. We have included Basic English at the 1500 word level. This is the 850, 50 international, 50 measures, 350 subsequent, 250 general. The "First Supplement 150" words has not been found -- they are words of common animals, plants, and foods. If found. they will be added, else a good guess is being worked on.
        These lists overlap to large degree and the Simple English versions make an attempt to remove duplicates.

    Most Frequently Used Words in English
        The 48 of most frequently used 50 words in English are Basic , 82 of the next 100 , and 63 of the next 100 are in Basic. [ Source is General Service List used by Longman and others. Other lists exist and usage changes over time, but the lists are similar. None include the very frequent - "aah, ya'no."] Just for fun, here are the first 300 words that are not Basic.
      |001-100|   can/could , know.
      |101-200|   think, find, must, should, just, tell, leave, few, ask, follow, during , hold, around, consider, problem, plan, stand ,course.
      |201-300|   city, close, unite, bring , try, provide, continue, pay, study, until,. service, report, toward, figure, return, include, yet, big, expect, car, several, matter, usual, rather, per, often, action.
    VOA Special English -- VOA SE is a valuable resource for learners to hear English in an easy, always available form.
        Half of VOA SE words are Basic. The other words are special for international news. They do not make a full language for daily living or work.
        Some like to add VOA Special English as part of Simple English, most noteably Simple Wikipedia. If that is what you want, we provide a complete Simple WIKI English download that adds VOA SE words to Simple that may be downloaded. Do not download this Simple English. The WIKI.zip download is a larger file and contain the options discussed later.

    DETAILS.
    Business - 84 root words -- expand to 307 with derivatives and compounds.
        In the area of Business, two Specialty lists are provided, each is fifty words, one for Commerce (trade) and one for Economics, but not one for general Business. Together they should provide the learner with one hundred general business words, but the lists overlap 16 words, so that the combined list is only 84 words. These words are included. the number expands to 307 words with derivatives and compound words.
    Science.   100 root words - common to the sciences. These words are included. We DO NOT include the speciality words for
         Biology.   50 words
         Geology.   50 words
         Mathematics & Mechanics.   50 words
         Physics-Chemistry.   50 words.
    Verse .   100 root words -- common to literature and poetry.
        The only specialty under Verse is Bible - 50 words, is not included, but is available separately.
    Social Science .   22 root words -- 14 General , 3 Economics , 5 Political Science
        You will remember that Florence has added social senses to existing Basic English words. Only 22 of the 100 social science words are new. There are no true sub-lists. The 22 words are included.

    Subsequent Words (next words after basic Basic) .   350 root words
        Although not part of Basic, the same techniques were used to determine the next words to be learned by the learner going forward to full English. These words meet the goals of Simple English Wiki and all are included. The Next 150 words for common foods, plants and animals will be added when found or a good guess will be provided.

    STATUS-- noted May 21, 2008.
      Roots Affixes Compounds
      basic.dic 2670YVer 0.6C
      business.dic 307Y N
      freq.dic 321Y N
      misc.dic (web) 33N/A N/A
      science.dic 370Y
      socialsci.dic 64Y
      subequent350.dic 401partial A,U-Z   partial
      verse.dic 353Ypartial
        One additional file may make life easier. This is the Proper Noun, or Capitalized Words, list. All proper nouns (capitalized names) are allowed in any language. Open Office spell checking underlines all non-Simple English words with a red line. Because no Capitalized words are included, then every capitalized word will be flagged as non-Simple. We have not included the very large Capitalized word list to make our development work easlier with the smaller file. The file is large, for example, because it contains at least ten international spellings of the name Alice. We may eventually include the Proper Nouns in the SIMPLE file.

    MORE THAN YOU NEED TO KNOW:
        The three files you copied into Open Office are:
      SIMPLE.dic This is the spell checking word list for Simple English.
      SIMPLE.aff This is a feature to make the software more efficient.
      (discuss more about affixes in readsimplemore.html? )
      dictionary.lst contains a list of all dictionaries that OpenOffice is capable of using. We have added: en_BZ (Basic English) and en_ZW (Simple English) as dialects of English. Also included are en_JM for Basic 1500 (not available, yet.) And en_GH for Wiki English (with VOA added).

    Note : The three files used here are simple text files that can be read and edited with any simple text editor.
    You will want to add your name, street, organization, other names of your interest to the SIMPLE.dic file after you have tested the process.
    If you add a lot of words, then update the line count on the first line.
        Spelling is case sensitive.
    OPTIONS

    Drop down translation suggestions from a full English word to Basic English.
        [ to discuss ] [Read readwiki.html]

    Capitalized Word list as an addition
        Download capital.zip
      Unzip to a temporary file. the only file is capital.dic
      Concatinate capital.zip to simple.dic ; sort ; change line count at top of file ; save as : [path/] simple.dic.

    More that you don't really need to know. (more)
    Reference project 452
    Return to : Institute Home
    About this Page: readsimple.html -- discussion of writing aids, spell checking wordlist for Simple English using OpenOffice.org software suite (HunSpell,MySpell).
    Last updated : May 21, 2008. Remove Simple Wiki English spell checking v 0.2, includes VOA SE and Capital options and announce WIKI.zip and Capital.zip downloads.
      May 9, 2008 -- add affixes to freq.dic
      May 2, 2008 -- Simplify to one main spell check file.
      February 1, 2006. -- minor wording changes
    Created : January 14, 2006. Plan of aids for Simple English
    URL:   http://www.basic-english.org/down/readsimple.html