Wikipedia talk:Basic English combined wordlist

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Has rare words but lacks common words

The standard lists of words combined in "WP:Basic English combined wordlist" have some very unusual words, but they lack words that most people learning English would certainly know along with the other 2,600 words already listed. Below, I am listing some of the unusual words (just to show how rare), but also listing the common words which have been omitted, to ask others to consider those common ones as being obvious (clear) to most new readers of English:

Rare words in lists: amplitude, asbestos, backwoods, beeswax, birthright, blackbird, blackboard, bloodvessel, bluebell, bookkeeper, brushwood, buttercup, birefringence, buoyancy, carter, cartilage, catarrh, champagne, chauffeur, citron, clockwork, clothier, congruent, consignment, cognac, creeper, cupboard, fatherland, footman, gasworks, germinating, goodlooking, good-morning, goodnight, gunboat, gun-carriage, gunmetal, hyena, inferno, jazz, kettle, liqueur, landslip, lighthouse, looking-glass, locus, macaroni, malaria, mania, monopoly, moustache, nicotine, nostril, olive, omelet, pajamas, paraffin, penguin, platinum, radium, referendum, rheumatism, saturated, scarp, schist, secretion, sedimentary, telegram, torpedo, upkeep, uplift, uptake, valency, vascular, velocity, vestigial, vortex, zebra, zinc.

Common words not listed: article (a/an/the), begin, bowl, bronze, bug, bus, cabinet, camel, car, class, close, consider, construct, contract (shrink), creature, data, dish, drug, eat, eighth, escape, expand, fast, feed, find, grade, ham, hidden, hide, horizontal, inform, information, keyboard, know, known, later, log, lower, mirror, mouse, nearly, neutral, ninth, obvious, pour, previous, prior, purple, raise, rare, raw, row, scene (CSI), seventh, shine, sing, sixth, speed, spider, spill, spray, style, tell, tenth, text, type, typical, unusual, upward, various, vein, verify, version, vertical, video, violet, vulgar, web.

The main point is that the use of the combined list of over 2,600 words should be thought of as overly small, while listing many unneeded rare words, for new readers of English in 2010. Hence, writers of articles should also feel free to use those other common words (such as: sixth to tenth, class, data, know, log, rare, text, type, etc.), even though those other words are not officially in the combined list. Perhaps all such common words should have articles (some words in the same article), just in case their use was confusing (as not being officially listed) so that new readers could learn the meanings by checking those articles.

It is important to state those ideas about the uncommon (rare) words; otherwise, some writers might become sad, angry or demoralized by thinking the combined word list was considered as totally balanced, when that is not the case. In the long run, Simple Wikipedia should probably have another list of perhaps 300-500 other common words, thought of, by writers here, as being easily understood by many new readers. If those other words were thought questionable, then perhaps, at least, tell new readers to look at the list to consider more simple words than the Basic English combined list. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC) Actually, the source does list many of the words that are absent from the page here. They should be put up on the list. Some of the words are an,came, class, drug, information, keyboard, web, type, text, spider, and mouse. In addition, it is also possible to sk whether horizontal, vertical, and vulgar are used along with vein and verify. Check is used more often than verify and it is on the list. The other words you have mentioned have been discussed on the "International Discussion page of the source being used and the words you mentioned are included.[reply]

Incomprehensible lede

The lead says, "It is not the Basic English list of 850 words plus 150 specialty words." Why would anyone think that it is? It is called the BEC 1500. This is a confusing sentence and it needs to be clarified or removed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why does the lead say that? 850 plus 150 doesn't add up to 1500, for example. It is a very confusing sentence and should not be in there. VLifeson 17:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Plurals, tenses

What variations on these words are acceptable? I presume that it's okay to use plurals? What about changing tense? Is this list exhaustive or not? Josh Parris 01:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Plurals are ok, and this wordlist is just an example. You can use many many words that are not on this list. The general idea is to use the simplest possible word or phrase you can for what you are trying to say. We often have to use very complex words because simple words don't exists for that particular technical phrase for example. -DJSasso (talk) 14:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is this page intended for Simple English audience?

I noticed in the leading sentences words like "subordinate" and "thus". Should not this page also be written as close to the Simple English style as possible? Nerfer (talk) 06:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree (as did at least one other person since those words are no longer present here). Even the words "basic," "addendum," and "endings" are not simple English, though "base," "addition," and "end" are (that's right, neither the words "basic" nor "English" are contained in the word list for "Basic English"). "Add" is not, though it used extensively in the Addition article. Other non-simple words used on this page include {maximum, advanced, student, knows, actually, contains, nouns, organizational, utility} and onomatopoeic (though this word is described in-line). (Perhaps I misunderstand the conjugation rules, in which a few of these words become okay). Also, I count 2018 unique words (2030 counting duplicates), not 2626. -- Adam Katz (talk) 23:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the numbers haven't been updated to reflect some editing on the page? It is interesting that basic and English are not in the word list. The purpose of the list is a guideline, rather than a fixed rule, but the intention of the project is to keep it as simple as possible.--Peterdownunder (talk) 11:18, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple meanings

Is there a good source for finding which meaning/word sense is intended?

For example, I see that the word present is on this list. Gift is not, and from this, I conclude that the intended sense is "a birthday present" (a subject usually covered in first-year language classes) rather than "Try to be fully present to this experience" or "Alice will present her report" or "In the present situation" or any of the other meanings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would love to know such a source. There are many such words on the list. There are also words like creeper, which probably meant a type of plant when the list was created, but which today has an additional meaning that I wouldn't consider simple. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:07, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have a source which distinguishes British English use (BNC) by part of speech. The adjective present is common enough to be basic (score that at 15). If you include its inflections, the verb present is nearly as common (call it 14): the most common single form being presented (8). The noun comes next (5) (including the plural(1), which is much less common than the singular(4)). Looking at the plural forms, gifts (2) is nearly twice as common as presents but it has the additional sense of talents (which, as a word, is about as common as presents). Presentation might scrape a 4, and the adverbial at present, a 3. Don't forget all the represent forms, though (I shall!).

Dear old creeper is not a common word at all. The verb creep struggles to score 2 and of the noun there is no sign (this is British English, remember). Well, "better late than never", they say (less than two years – I'm improving!). Check out Talk:Most_common_words_in_English for my reputable sources.^[1] --GrounderUK (talk) 10:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

↑ "Companion Website for: Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus". Archived from the original on 6 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-06-05.

Animals

Among animals not listed include flea, mosquito, tick, and wasp; octopus and squid; jellyfish; elephant, ferret, fox, giraffe, hyena, kangaroo, leopard, lion, panda, tiger, turtle, and wolf... --— Preceding unsigned comment added by Pbrower2a (talk • contribs) 18:20, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The list isn't meant to list all of anything. It's a list from a specific source. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:08, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Number of words

There are only 2049 words in this list, not the claimed 2600+ words ...

Jansegers (talk) 16:44, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

General utility names

What does that mean? This is too vague, and I don't see a way of finding out. Does it mean gas and electricity or get and have? Or something else, that doesn't come readily to mind to this native speaker? If it means the first, the why use the word 'names' unless it is referring to companies? Kdammers (talk) 02:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This page is fully created from sources by the experts in the field, you would have to read the source reference to get the information you seek. This isn't a page created by lay Wikipedia editors. -Djsasso (talk) 12:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the source and at the edit that rewrote the lead it looks like they likely accidentally added the word names to that sentence because it was on the line above as well and is not used in the source. I have removed the word names. -Djsasso (talk) 12:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Missing the word "is"

Sorry if I'm doing this wrong, it's my first day editing on Wikipedia. I think the word "is" is unintentionally missing from this word list, since it's in the first source but not on the page. I can't figure out how to edit it myself, though, sorry. Reddie133 (talk) 22:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is is in the list: it is a verb, the infinitive is "to be". Eptalon (talk) 22:37, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Missing the word "are"

The list does not contain "are", but it is an important part of English. Changing "are" to "is" just makes sentences grammatically incorrect.— Preceding unsigned comment added by JanKeso (talk • contribs) 13:35, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JanKeso, "are", "is", and all conjugations of be are included as "be". — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 13:39, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. JanKeso (talk) 13:42, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1293 words used as an addendum (?)

"addendum" is a rare and formal word, unknown for many, if not most, native English speakers. In the current context those 1293 words are used not only as an extra information but, first of all, as an extension of the basic vocabulary. "Addendum" is too general. It's like saying that you will go by a vehicle when you mean an airplane. So my proposal is to replace "addendum" with "extension". 85.193.215.210 (talk) 00:37, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

http://ogden.basic-english.org/ had sadly used the word "addendum" to refer to extensions like these. extension and extend are also unseen in the list and are used for users achieving English skills of high intermediate. Can you think of better words? DeeDeeEn (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One similar word I can think of that is on the list is "addition". However, that word may be known more in the context of math, so I'm not sure if it's the best replacement for "addendum". You could do "more", but that also may be too vague. The idea here is that "addendum" words are considered more advanced than the "basic" words, but still relatively well known and acceptable to use on Simple English Wikipedia. So maybe something like "mature", "high level", "high-level", or "higher level" would work, since those options are all made from words on the list and accepted rules. I'm not sure which option I'd go with honestly. 129.174.182.23 (talk) 15:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"May" is there twice

The word "may" is there twice: one time it is spelled with a lowercase "m", the second with a uppercase "M". Are both of them about the month "May", or is the wikilink wrong? Does the first "may" mean "might"? They both link to the month and I need to use "might" in a sentence. I know that wikilinks are insensitive to the first letter (sorry if it is not simple enough, I do not know how to say it). Dream Indigo 13:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dream Indigo: I just linked the lower-case one to Wiktionary. As you can see in the Wiktionary entry, the lower-case spelling has multiple meanings. -- Auntof6 (talk) 16:53, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @Auntof6 Dream Indigo 20:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[WFWSEweb-1] "Companion Website for: Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus". Archived from the original on 6 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-06-05.

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