Basic Anglo-Saxon English

Basic Anglo-Saxon English is a simplification of Ogden's Basic English, but with a vocabulary limited only to Modern English words derived from Anglo-Saxon terms. Think of it as English purged of the Romance: Unromantic English. The following Anglo-Saxon English words (in blue above) replaced the Basic English terms in the Babel Text:

• speech replaces language
• land replaces country
• side replaces face (as in surface)
• folk replaces people
• understood replaces clear
• tongues replaces languages
• meaning replaces sense
• now anything they try to do will not be kept from them replaces it will not be possible to keep them from any purpose of theirs [the words possible and purpose are from Latin]

Note: The word part was in Anglo-Saxon (Old English), but is in fact from Romance - it is a borrowing of Latin pars.

The Babel Text, in Basic Anglo-Saxon English

I was too lazy to actually completely define Basic Anglo-Saxon English. If someone wants to clean up after me by analyzing the thousand words of the Basic English word list, identifying the non-Anglo-Saxon terms and replacing them with Anglo-Saxon-based terms (as shown above), let me know.

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