Readme Notes for Supplementary Wordlists
for Basic English General area and Specialty wordlists
and customizations -- January 15, 2006
Files included:
Purpose:
Every learner of Basic English is expected to know the 850 words,
the international words, and how to use derivatives and complex words, plus
one area of General interest with 100 words, such as Science, Business,
or Verse; and one Specialty detail within that general topic of 50 words
such as Biology, Economics, or Bible.
Business - 84 root words.
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, which is even less to learn.
We can assume that the overlapping 16 words will eventually
form the start of a general business list and that other specific
areas will be created -- banking, insurance, investments, . . .
what about personnel, inventory, quality, manufacturing? -- from
which other general business words will be revealed.
The sixteen words that overlap are :
asset , average , bill , broker , cost , guarantee ,
investment , liability , loan , partner , purchase ,
retail , sale , strike , supply , wholesale .
Commerce - 105 root words-- Business with the addition of 21 replacement words for trade mentioned in "Basic for Business".
canal, capital , carton, case, cash, consul, dock, duty, factor, minus, percent, premium,
propaganda, plus, royalty, sold, slump, sold, stand, wagon, warrant.
Science. 100 root words - common to the sciences.
International 13 words of science in common use -- anesthetic, bomb, electricity, magnetic, microscope, neutron, organism, petroleum, serum, thermometer, tropism, turbine, vitamin.
Biology. 50 words
Geology. 50 words
Mathematics & Mechanics. 50 words
Physics-Chemistry. 50 words
Verse - Bible . 150 root words -- 100 Verse, 50 Bible
Because Bible is the only detail topic under the general area of Verse,
they will be used together (until additional topics are created).
This list was originally provided by Todd Mountjoy and updated a little.
Verse-Bible was later expanded for use with an affix file.
Does a topic of "Literature" with specialty details for
Verse, Bible, (Romance, Mystery, theater, media) and Grammar, etc. make any sense?
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. Therefore we make recommend that the 50 words from Business-Economics be
added, taken from file business.txt . In fact, the other 34 words in that file for business-commerce have some social relevance, so that that whole file might be added and save you some effort. Our logic is that business-economics is appropriate and that commerce has social relevance. Even adding these 84 words to the 22 Social Science words is still far short of the 150 words normally expected of a supplemental area of interest.
The 50 words for business-economics are
accident, arbitration, asset, average, bill, broker, budget, circulation, combine, consumer, conversion, correlation, cost, deflation, demand, deposit, discount, efficiency, effort, employer, experiment, factor, fatigue, guarantee, habit, index, inflation, investment, liability, loan, margin, monopoly, partner, pension, plan, population, purchase, rent, retail, sale, saving, security, service, share, speculation, statistics, stimulus, strike, supply, wholesale.
The 34 words for business-commerce are :
accident, arbitration, budget, circulation, combine, consumer, conversion, correlation, deflation, demand, deposit, discount, efficiency, effort, employer, experiment, factor, fatigue, habit, index, inflation, margin, monopoly, pension, plan, population, rent, saving, security, service, share, speculation, statistics, stimulus
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.
This file seems a good place to put this Subsequent 350 wordlist for use with Simple English applications.
The ".dic" suffix indicates that suffixes and compound words have been applied.
To Use:
Using OpenOffice.org Writer, open en_BE.dic.
Copy one or more the specialty wordlist(s) into en_BE.dic.
While the file is open
Add your name, town, street, etc., one word per line.
Add a code word to confirm which wordlist is active : aachemistry, etc..
Simple English users :
add VOASE and Freq 1000 words in the same way.
This will be even more useful if you know how to add affix codes.
Delete duplicates.
Change the word count in the first line to the combined number.
Sort alphabetically.
Save as en_BE2.dic or en_Simple.dic or en_anyname.dic
That's all.
You are ready to continue on to creating another language
in the "dictionary.lst" file.
It may have a path something like this :
C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.0\share\dict\ooo\dictionary.lst
Add this line :
English (Jamaican) will now be recognized as a language with spell checking
capabilities. Configure the OOo text processor to recognize the language "English ( Jamaica)" as default or "For the current document only."
Exit OOo Quickstart and re-start OOo.
To Undo:
There are no registry entries. Simply delete or don't use any features
that are no longer wanted.
Details:
The number at the top is the word count. This saves the system
from having to do two passes thru the file. Therefore when you add
your name, town, etc. to the list, you will want to increase the
word count.
Affix file.
Spell checking software often makes use of "affix" files and an
algorithm to add prefix and suffix forms to the root word.
The OpenOffice.org affix file currently has 22 affixes defined.
Ogden's Basic English makes use of only some of these.
Affix files have some
idiosyncrasies; for example, re- is one of seven prefix options and is
coded as option A. The word "read" is coded as ad/A. This can
get confusing. The Institute will eventually provide several
versions for users levels of spell checking needs. The Basic 1500
level seems to have some demand.
The affix file, en_US.aff can be left alone. The OOo original will
accept a few -ion , -ment, and other suffixes that are not allowed
in Basic English.
Alternatively, you can use the Basic English version, en_BE.aff,
which is a more restrictive. You can select either in the dictionary.lst
file or make your own after reading how to make affixes.
Notes about OOo.
Download OpenOffice.org,
its freeware, or order it as a CD from one of their
partners.
We paid $5.50 for a copy.
Somebody owns the word "OpenOffice" so the software must be called
OpenOffice.org. Wonder what he story there is?
OOo calls spell-checking word lists -- a dictionary.
They call a translation chart -- a thesaurus or synonym list.
An OOo dictionary, .dic, file is a simple text file saved as
with OpenOffice Writer as text, but with the name-end of .doc . A "techy type" might chose to save as "text encoded", with LF, without CR. (It saves one
carriage return per word, which is a lot.) Saving as a regular text
file will work fine and is easier to work with for additions and changes.
OpenOffice QuickStart must be "off" only once, to recognize new dictionaries
or affix files. QuickStart will save loading time after this first time.
About this Page: readspec.html -- discussion of specialty wordlists
for spell checking for OpenOffice.org.
Last updated : January 15, 2005. Major rewrite. Add subsequent 350.
URL: http://www.basic-english.org/down/readspec.html