This is a project to build a tool to help us to write in a Simpler English, mainly to contribute to the Simple English
Wikipedia. Here I outline the design principles.
The Simple English Wikipedia states that articles should be written in "Simple English", described as
an English using "the 1000 most common words in the English language". However, it doesn't go into much detail about which are "the 1000 most common words of the English language". My spellchecker
tries to solve this problem by offering a wide (and hopefully) acceptable set of "the 1000 most common words of the English
language".
The first sources for the spellchecking dictionary are the recommended "Sight Words" by
Dolch and
Fry, which define a standard set of 1000 words all native speakers should know to read fluently. These word lists have been merged
with the
Longman Defining Vocabulary to make a word list suited to write dictionary entries and thus to define further words.
The product of this merge (the "Simplest English") actually validates most definitions for
Special and
Specialized English, so these word lists have been added to the dictionary. Several words from
Ogden's Basic English (the
850 core and
compound words in particular) have been added to make a lesser "special" or "specialized" vocabulary. Finally, more words have been
added where they seemed to be needed, following
Harrison's Universal Language Dictionary (v2.0) recommendations.
The final product is a superset of all the sources mentioned above (again: Dolch, Fry and Longman as sources, with Basic,
Special and Specialized English as targets). These word lists specify a fairly wide vocabulary for general purpose writing
(somewhere around 3000 root words, not counting compounds and demonyms), suitable for basic science, politics, economics,
and religion, avoiding many "complex" words from specialized fields.
Please report false positives and omissions at the User's Page in Wikipedia, and send your suggestions for "simple" words
at the English Wiktionary. Likely candidates are words from
Ogden's Specialized fields.
