Ryota's Old Daybook: Language Arts & Basic English

Changing Names

2007-01-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

On 03/04/05, or March 4th of 2005, this weblog was started as Ryota's Daybook: Language Arts & Basic English.I made a start of another weblog, however, in November of the same year, named Ryota's New Daybook.After that, the new one has become my chief daybook in English. So I'm taking the name of this old daybook and giving it to the new one. From now on, the name of this old weblog here will be

The End

2005-11-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

This online daybook is ended. Ryota's new online writings in English will be put at:http://ryotasan.jugem.jpIt's been very kind of you coming here.

Ryota's New Daybook

2005-11-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

I am making a new online pages, testing to see if the system there is better than here.http://ryotasan.jugem.jp/

New Paper on Basic

2005-10-31T22:13:00.000-08:00

Good news! A new paper on Basic English is now out in an international newsletter on language teaching."Towards a People's English: Back to BASIC in EIL" is a new attempt to make teachers see that an answer, or the answer, to troubles in teaching EIL, English as an International Language, is Ogden's Basic English. The paper in the newest copy of Humanising Language Teaching gives a short history

More on the Man Who Was at the Nazi Prison

2005-10-30T23:08:00.000-08:00

August Kowalczyk, in 1940, was a young Polish man with a strong love for his country. He made an attempt of getting out of Poland to be with a Polish group secretly working against Adolph Hitler's political moves in France. He was taken by Nazi law-officers and sent, as the prisoner number 6408, to a walled place at Oswiecim. At the time Oswiecim, a Polish town, was under the rule of the Nazi

Leaves of trees are changing

2005-10-29T02:02:00.000-07:00

their colors from green to red, orange, yellow or brown. Time of sundown is getting earlier.

A man who was at a Nazi prison

2005-10-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

came to our university and gave a public talk on his experience inside the wall of the death houses. He is an old but strong-looking Polish and gave his talk in Polish.

Been to the Basic English

2005-10-22T04:25:00.000-07:00

Society's general meeting. This society is a small group of Japanese working on Basic. A great number of them are teachers. Some have a very long experience.

Night School

2005-10-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

Fukushima University, in this April, made a start with a new structure. One of the new divisions in the university is a night school.I myself made a start of teaching at night from this October. This is the third week, and I'm going to do my work starting at 7:40.Most of the learners at night school are a bit older than the daytime university men and women. Some have works in the day.This time

Stand by Me: The Song and the Motion Picture

2005-10-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

If you keep yourself upright, on your feet, you are standing. When you stand by me, you keep yourself upright, on your feet, by me, as my friend. "Stand by Me" is an old song from the 1960's, made by an New Orleans man of music Ben E. King.I'm writing about this song, though "stand" is not a Basic word, because the first three lines of the song are all made of Basic words. I don't make a copy

Fall

2005-10-08T00:14:00.000-07:00

is the days after summer and before winter. The position of the sun in the middle of the day has a fall from high to low. The measure of heat in the daytime has a fall to the level between warm and cold. Leaves of trees have a change of their colors. At the end of fall, these red, yellow, leaves have their falls. The "dead" leaves on the earth, a sign of coming winter, are food for very small

The Basic English Society, Japan,

2005-09-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

is a group of Japanese working on and teaching Basic English. Most of them are teachers. This Basic English Society, helped by the GDM teachers, is to have a one-day public meeting on 22 October, at Mita Fukushi Kaikan, 4-1-17, Shiba, Minatoku, Tokyo. It's five-minute walk from JR Tamachi Station.10:00 is the starting time of their business meeting. There will be, in addition, a number of public

Another Letter in the Thai Paper

2005-09-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

Mr. Bill Templer's letter on Basic English, printed on The Nation, an English newspaper in Thailand, got a good reaction. Another letter, this time by someone from Thailand, was printed on the 11 September copy of the same paper."Simplified English Might Make Diplomacy Less Difficult" is about Mr. Surapon Vatanavigkit's experience, when he was at Western Michigan University, of reading a book on

It's not warm today. This may

2005-09-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

be the best time of the year in our part of Japan. The time of sundown is getting earlier. Days are getting shorter.

Letter in a Thai Newspaper

2005-09-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Thailand has a long history of being by itself, not dependent on or ruled by another nation. The Thai men and women have their language and their ways of living. Most of them, however, have to take time learning English at school. They seem to have a hard time learning the very different language and a great number of them are unhappy about the experience.The Nation, an English-language newspaper

It's a beautiful day with a

2005-08-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

clear sky. A great number of high schoolers are on the street. Days for work have come.

I's cold enough to be working

2005-08-31T02:08:00.000-07:00

early in the morning.

I said that I was unhappy

2005-08-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

facing a mountain of work. I DO take pleasure, however, in writing if the air is not very wet and warm. One way to get over the trouble is to do my work late at night or early in the morning. My mind does its work better in the quiet. It may be good, in different times of the year, to have different working hours. A simpler way to overcome the heat is to make the room air-conditioned, but it

I'm looking for a way to send

2005-08-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

a longer note, longer than one line. Have I got it? It seems that I've got it. Great! Now I'm able to put a longer note. I probably had a wrong idea of this small machine. Now I'm sending this out to my Daybook. But is it possible [to] make the note longer again? Yes. It seems possible. I'm happy.

Summer or Fall?

2005-08-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

The island was very warm, so my skin was frequently wet. But I was happy with my wet skin because there was a soft wind most of the time. The only sign of fall time was a dragonfly, an insect with a long tail and long wings, going in the clear air.Fukushima is still warm in the daytime, with those insects making metal-like noise. I'm unhappy with my wet skin and a mountain of work to do. The air

I've been to a small island in

2005-08-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

the southwest of Kyushu, helping my family and making friends.

We're having very warm days

2005-08-14T00:25:00.000-07:00

with quick and strong rainfalls before sundown.

Insects

2005-08-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

The air is full of metal-like sound given out by some sorts of insect. The sound is like that of rain.The insect, after the sleep of six years in the earth, comes out on a summer morning, goes up a tree, makes its clear skin open, and gets out of it, in the new form with wings. It goes in the air, puts its mouth-pipe through the skin of a tree, takes water out of the tree as its food, giving

Every day is a good day.

2005-08-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

Dogen

Off-Work Days

2005-08-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

My birthplace was in the heat of the sun and of the summer event. It was very very warm and my clothings quickly got wet.We had good times meeting my father in law, my mother in law, making and having a night-meal in the garden, watching television, having talks, seeing my brother in law with his baby-boy, seeing my mother, going to an art museum, looking after my son playing in the water,

Now I'm on a highway-bus to

2005-08-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

the town of my birth, where my mother is still living.

Yes. It's 12.

2005-08-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

5+7+5=12

No. It's 14.

2005-08-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

Five, seven and five.

It may be good for writing

2005-08-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

haiku, a Japanese verse made of 12 sound-units.

The trouble with this system

2005-07-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

is that you may send short, one-line, notes only.

Testing

2005-07-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

It's a telephone with radio connetion.

Testing

2005-07-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

The machine is an F900iC by NTT DoCoMo.

Testing

2005-07-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

This is a test of sending a note from a talking machine.

Yuzuru's Daybook

2005-07-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

I have been hoping, secretly, that Mr. Katagiri would someday, like me, make his online daybook and give out his day-to-day experience and opinions to young online readers, without going through business of having books and newsletters printed and taking them to bookstores.If we make a comparison, printed writings are like recorded music, and online writings are more like radio music, played on

Gagagram

2005-07-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ogden gave, in the book named Brighter Basic, an account of a strange language game named Gagagram. [Game is a sort of play with rules. It's not a Basic word.] It's for having a good time and for training the sense of language structure.The rule of the play is simple: Put a statement on a paper and make its word-order into something which is not possible. The point is that you have to put all the

Open House

2005-07-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our open house day. Please see my account.

Zoo

2005-07-11T23:19:00.000-07:00

It's a short word. It's in every boy or girl's knowledge. You may come across it in most of starter-level school-books of English language. But, strangely, it's not on Ogden's list of 850 Basic words. Why not? Because other words on the list do the work."Zoo" is short for "zoological garden," or "garden of zoology." "Zo" came into English from a Greek word for "animal," and "ology" is from a

The Basic English Society, Japan

2005-07-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

Churchill's days as head of the British government came to an end in 1945, and K. E. Garay says that their interest in Basic English, in addition, came to an end. The political group who took power in Britain was more intested in works inside of their country.http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=527The US govenment did their work on Basic and, with some more words, they made

More about Empires of the Mind

2005-06-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

Dr. Koeneke's book is an attempt to have a detailed look back at what I. A. Richards did in China, in the light of current political theories.Richards, though he was a kind teacher and lover of peace, was a man from the Great British Empire, teaching the language of the Empire. Probably he was a true friend of Chinese, but they were not equal.The 2nd division of the book gives an account of the

Newsletter on Richards-Gibson System

2005-06-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

I got a parcel this morning. It was News Bulletin 57, a 35-page newsletter from Graded Direct Method Association of Japan, the group of teachers working on Richards-Gibson system.It has 10 writings on the system and a short record of what the group did from August 2003 to July 2004. Most of the 10 are papers in Japanese, by Japanese teaching English in Japan. They give facts and opinions based

Churchill and Empires of the Mind

2005-06-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

Before writing about Empires of the Mind, the book, I will give some account of what "empires of the mind" they are first of all.The name of the book comes from a public talk given in 1943 at Harvard University, Cambrdge, Massachusetts, US, by Winston S. Churchill: "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."Empire is government or nation ruling other nations or countries. Churchill

Empires of the Mind

2005-06-08T21:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got a small cardboard box from Amazon.com. In it was a hardcover copy of the book Empires of the Mind: I. A. Richards and Basic English in China, 1929-1979 by Rodney Koeneke.Today, I went through the part 1 of the Introduction, the opening of the book. It gives a short history of what Richards did in China: in 1930's, in 1950 and in 1979.Because I'm reading other books in addition

Spellbound

2005-06-06T01:05:00.000-07:00

Spell is a general English word used with a sense of "talk, or word." In fiction, stories like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, a person with special power does an unnatural, but interesting, thing like making himself go up in the air, by saying a special word; that sort of power-word is a spell.Bound is a general English word for being "fixed." The persons and most of animals, for example

Ryota's Japanese Daybook

2005-05-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

I have made a new daybook in Japanese. It is chiefly for young men and women at Fukushima University. But anyone interested may come.

Basic English Discussion Group

2005-05-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

Most of word-processing or picture-processing machines, online or offline, do their work by controlling electrons, very small bits whose moves make electric current. Those machines are electronic machines. We send out mails, or notes and letters, out of our machines eletronically, and get mails from our friends all over the earth. Years back, the name of those electronic mails became short

English through Pictures

2005-05-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

I. A. Richards, when teaching English in China, got more and more interested in teaching Basic English to starters. He kept working on it after coming to Harvard, helped by Christine Gibson. Their step-by-step way of teaching had a growth into a new system, with books like English through Pictures, French through Pictures, German through Pictures, Hebrew through Pictures, and so on.Book 1 and 2

Arms and the Man, Again

2005-05-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

An opening part of Arms and the Man, in Basic, is online. It is at the Basic English Institute of Mr. Bauer.http://ogden.basic-english.org/isl442.html

Arms and the Man

2005-05-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

"Who's there? . . . Who's there? Who is that?""Sh--sh! don't make a noise; or you'll be fired at. Be good; and you'll be quite safe. . . . Take care: it's no use attempting to get away." "But who--" "Now then; if you make a noise, my gun will go off. . . . Get a light and let me see you. Is that clear?"Those words are a part of the talk between a young woman and a man from a stage-play in

Walking Stick

2005-05-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

Walking stick is the name of what you take in your hand to keep you in good balance when you have a hard time in walking, because your legs are feeble, you are on a hard road, or going up a mountain.If a stick, or a machine in the form of stick, makes a move and has a walk, it may go by the name of "walking stick."You will say: "No. A stick may only have a jump or roll. It doesn't have legs, so

Connection: Ogden's Use of an American Word-Form

2005-04-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

"Connection" is a Webster-American letter-use which somehow made into Ogden's list. Though some British writers like Thomas Hardy made use of "connection," a great number of British writers have made use of the other form of the same word: "connexion." If you have knowledge of the history behind the word, you may have a feeling that "connexion" makes the better sense, though the form is not

Knowledge Is Power

2005-04-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

English through Pictures is more than books for language learning. The reader may come across statements like this:Knowledge gives us light.It makes things clearer to us. (Richards and Gibson, Book 2. 151)

A Clock Has a Face, by Richards and Gibson

2005-04-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

This is from English through Pictures. Do you see that it's like a verse?A clock has a face.It has no nose.It has no eyes.It has no mouth.It has no ears.It has no hairbut it has a face.It has a face and two hands,the long handand the short hand.I. A. Richards and Christine Gibson, English through Pictures, Book 1 (46)

Please Have a Seat.

2005-04-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

Basic English doesn't have a number of frequently used words on the list. One example is the word for something you make yourself seated: chair. Chairs are almost everywhere. So why it's not on the list?Picture taken by Elba Vazquez-MoralesSo take a look at the picture. What is the thing under the tree, which you make yourself seated? It's not a chair. In American or British English, a long and

Earth-Shock!

2005-04-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

The Earth is like a fruit with hard skin and very soft meat. The meat is like liquid, moving under the skin. The skin, or the great cover made of stone, sometimes makes a crack, sending out a shockwave. When the shockwave comes out to the face of the earth, it gives a shake. It's an earth-shock. When an earth-shock gives a blow to the sea, a great amount of seawater goes away from the land.

Color or Colour?

2005-04-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

The picture made by OCPS Instruction Television.I make use Ogden's Basic English mostly as designed by Ogden, with small changes. The changes I have made is the use of letters for words "behavior," "color," "gray," "harbor," "humor" and "plow."They are different from the way used on Ogden's list. On his list, they were like this: "behaviour," "colour," "grey," "harbour," "humour" and "plough."

Plato: Things Which Are Greek 3

2005-04-13T02:41:00.000-07:00

The picture was taken by Mr. Gay Sherman.Hundreds of years after Homer, the growth of Greece kept on. They had towns, buildings, markets and schools. Every town had its political system in which every free men got together in the square, had talks and discussion, made decision about the way of the town society. There were great events for men of physical power, the meetings which went by the name

Homer: Things Which Are Greek 2

2005-04-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Homer, or Homeros, was a writer and giver of stories in songs, who had no power of seeing and was living about 2700 years back from now. It was such a long time back that no one is certain of the facts, but he is said to be the writer of two very noted stories in verse: The Iliad and The Odyssey. They are two of the oldest stories in the West.The Iliad is about Achilles, the strongest man from

Things Which Are Greek

2005-04-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

The Olympic competition is not the only international thing started, thousands of years back, in Greece. Very important parts of arts and sciences in the West came from the Greece. The Book of Christian religion, though it was started in the Middle East, was in Greek because it was the international language. After the Romans took the political power and their Latin became the international

International Words

2005-04-08T00:10:00.002-07:00

Ogden said that 50 international words, in addition to the word "international" itself, might be used with Basic words. Here is the list from his book The ABC of Basic English (169):alcohol, aluminium, automobile, bank, bar, beef, beer, calendar, cheque, chemist, chocolate, chorus, cigarette, club, coffee, colony, dance, engineer, gas, hotel, influenza, lava, madam, nickel, opera, orchestra,

GDM, or Richards-Gibson System

2005-04-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

I. A. Richards and Christine Gibson at Harvard University made a system of teaching languages. First it was started as a way of teaching Basic English to learners with no knowledge of English. Book 1 and 2 of their English through Pictures are in fact for learning about 750 of Basic words and International words. They are the best books for starting learners of Basic.Book 3 is a step to a level

Fukushima University, Japan: A Guide in Basic English

2005-04-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have made a new online page: Fukushima University, Japan: A Guide in Basic English. It will be specially about my university.

Bladerunner: A New Basic Word

2005-04-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

Mr. Ohyama is writing about his love of motion pictures and music of Vangelis. So I will put something more about moving pictures, Vangelis music, and Basic English.Vangelis, who had been noted among some lovers of new music, got attention from all over the earth in 1981 when he made music for the motion picture Chariots of Fire: a story of two British young runners taking part in the Olympics at

Vangelis

2005-04-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

Evangelos O. Papathanassiou is a music writer and keyboard player, who made the music for the motion picture Alexander. Evangelos generally goes, outside of Greece, by the name of "Vangelis."Because he is Greek, he certainly has the knowledge of Greek music which goes well with the picture based on old Greek history. Because he's been working on machines for making music, he certainly has the

Alexander

2005-04-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Alexandros was young king of Mecedonia, about 2300 years back from now, who took Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and India under his rule. It was, to anyone in that time and place, the same as taking all of Europe, Africa and Asia, all the lands on the face of the earth.The most important work he did was probably building of the library, the first in history, at Alexandria, Egypt.His mother

Humor

2005-04-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

An interesting discussion is going on among my friends Mr. Ohyama and Mr. Tsuchiya. It's about one of the words on Ogden's list: humor.Ogden, in The Basic Words, said that the root sense of this word was "humeur" in French, "Laune" in German, or general condition of mind, or feeling, and as an expasion, this word was used as quality causing amusement. http://basic850.blogspot.com/2005/03/

Mr. Katagiri's Pages

2005-04-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Ryota's Daybook had a sudden increase of new readers yesterday. So I did some work on the Network and made certain that it was not a trick on the first of April. A great number of new readers came through bookmarks on pages by Yuzuru Katagiri.Mr. Katagiri, or Yuzurusan, is a writer/producer of books, university teacher of languages, and trainer of a special way of making one's body and mind free

About Basic English

2005-04-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

These are bookmarks to my writings about Basic: Basic English C. K. Ogden I. A. Richards The 850 Words What Is "Basic"? A Short Guide to Basic English Basic English: International Second Language The Basic BooksInternational Words The Bible in Basic EnglishBasic English Discussion Group, in Japanese Basic English Writers' Japanese-English Wordbook

Basic 850: An Online Wordbook

2005-03-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

I have made a new page:Basic 850: An Online Wordbook. It is for accounts and examples of Basic words.

Weblog IN Education

2005-03-29T22:52:00.000-08:00

Network journey has given me an idea that it will be good if we make use of blogs, or weblogs, in education.You may say that there are a great number of weblogs, or online daybooks with bookmarks, by learners and teachers, already.I will say, "Yes. I myself have made one, and there are others." Most of them, however, seem to be ON or ABOUT learning or teaching. Weblogs have power to do more.

Looking Back: The GDM Meeting

2005-03-28T22:50:00.000-08:00

The meeting of GDM teachers in Kyoto was great. 21 Japanese teachers of English language took part. Some were from towns round Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. One was from Okinawa. 14 of them, one by one, gave talks or examples of hands-on training. One of the talks was on language teaching based on Rudolf Steiner's education theory. In addition to that, we happily had discussion and saw recorded

Back from Kyoto

2005-03-27T23:48:00.000-08:00

Now I'm back in my living place in the northeast of Japan.Saturday morning was the start of my journey. Snow was falling from the gray sky. Kyoto was in the warm weather, with small flowers like pink and white stars among the trees in the great garden made for the ruler of Japan long time back.Sunday in Kyoto was another warm day, with soft light coming through the white sky.It is [was] raining

I'm in Kyoto

2005-03-26T05:44:00.001-08:00

After [a] four-hour journey on the special train, I came to Kyoto, and had a good time joining teachers who are working on GDM. Hands-on experience of GDM teaching, talks, and heated discussion made hours go quickly. We'll have talks and discussion, again, tomorrow.The picture is one from the hotel's online pages.

Going to Kyoto

2005-03-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

Today I'm going to take a special train for Kyoto. I'll be at the GDM meeting there. I have a regret to say that I don't have much time for writing now. Let me go offline for a while.

Basic English: International Second Language

2005-03-24T00:39:00.000-08:00

I said that some parts of the book Basic English were in Basic. But it came to me, when I was going over Mr. Bauer's pages, that most of the second and the third divisions of the book are in Basic. So you may have a good time reading them, seeing examples and getting the necessary knowledge of Ogden's designed language.

Bookmarking This Daybook

2005-03-23T04:54:00.000-08:00

If you are going to put a bookmark, or make a link, to this Daybook, please take note that a new writing may be put at the top almost every day, and that the older writings go down. That's the way this sort of online daybook goes. You may always see something different every day if you get here through the bookmark .If you have a desire to put a bookmark to one

Basic English Writers' Japanese-English Wordbook

2005-03-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

Writing English, for most of the Japanese who have been learning English for years in colleges or univeristies, is an uncertain business. Most of them have doubts that their English is all right. If one is dependent on a friend whose mother tongue is English, the friend frequently has a hard time making out what is in the writing.One great reason of this trouble is our jisho: wordbooks. Let me

A Short Guide to Basic English

2005-03-21T01:25:00.000-08:00

Basic English: International Second Language is one of Ogden's books put online by Mr. Bauer. It is in fact a number of different books made into one. The book has three "sections," or three great divisions: 1. "Basic English," 2. "The System in Detail," and 3. "Examples."Division 1 "Basic English" is in some different parts: producer's note, part 1, part 2, and additions. Part 1, "A General

What Is "Basic"?

2005-03-20T03:24:00.000-08:00

Ogden, in his book Basic for Science, gave an account of what is the sense of the word "Basic": "getting down to the roots of the purpose and structure of language, and specially designed as an instrument for the distribution of knowledge" (27).The point here is that something basic is not necessarily simple. The word "basic" is, in fact, not on Ogden's list; it is not one of the 850. Some

On Basic English: In German

2005-03-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

If you are better at German language than at English, you may get knowledge of Basic English by reading an account in German. Here are short accounts by Mr. Robert Warnke. Because I'm not good at German, I'm not certain how good these pages are.

GDM Discussion in Kyoto

2005-03-17T17:27:00.000-08:00

An open discussion meeting of the Graded Direct Method, for starters and middle-level learners, is to take place at the Palaceside Hotel (075-415-8887) in Kyoto, Japan, on the 26 and 27, Saturday and Sunday, of March 2005. The group who takes care of the meeting is the West Japan branch of English language teachers for GDM.I will give a talk about my experience of learning languages by myself

Been Away, Will Be Back

2005-03-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've been away from my living place for two days, and I've been unable to get a connection. But I will be back soon.

The Bible in Basic English

2005-03-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Bible, the most imortant book of Christian religion, has been put into different languages for these 2000 years. The word "Bible" is not on the Basic word list, but it gives us little trouble, because, in countries where English is a common language, this book frequently goes by the name of "the Book." If you go back in the history of languages, you will in fact see that the sense of this

What Is a Trackback?

2005-03-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

"Trackback" is the name of a new system for making connections to other persons' daybooks. If you come across an interesting writing when you are reading someone's weblog, you may put your opinion about her or his writing, with a bookmark, onto YOUR weblog, send a special sign named "ping" to the special place which takes care of the connection, and then you will see a short statement under the

Basic English Insititute

2005-03-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

The best international online pages ON Basic English, so far, has been James Bauer's Basic English Institute. It is, in addition, a not-for-money network for the devlopment of open online program, which is to be the expansion of Ogden's Basic. It was started in the first month of 2003 as an expansion of Basiceng.com - online pages started in 1996 to give out the system of Ogden's Basic to public.

What Is a Comment?

2005-03-12T14:21:00.000-08:00

Comment."What is said; opinion" (The Basic Dictionary)."Something said about a thing, sp. making point in book etc. clear" (The General Basic English Dictionary).Some new blogs, or weblogs, have a new system of making comments on a writing. If you put the pointer on the word "Comment," give a quick push to your controller, and then you will see a new window opened.There you may put your opinion

Still Learning about Blogs

2005-03-11T18:49:00.000-08:00

Some network experts say that blogs are more than daybooks. That is, blogs are NOT only daybooks; they have something more. I'm saying the same thing again because some teachers in Japan, even some experts of language teaching in Universities, get a wrong idea of "more than." "A is more than B," for example, will be put into signs, if the person has the right idea, like this: A > B Anyway, I

Blog Trouble

2005-03-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

One of my friends sent a note to me, saying that he was not able to put his opinion onto Ryota's Daybook. So I went into Help pages of the system and came across this writing: Users are currently getting "Blog not found" errors when accessing comment pages. We are working on getting this resolved ASAP.So some users are currently getting error signs that say it is not possible to get

Fukushima University

2005-03-10T23:47:00.000-08:00

This is a bird's eye view of my work-place: Fukushima University. The owner of the University is the Japanese government.My office is at the teaching-training division, teaching young men and women. Most of them have a desire to be school-teacher in the future.Go to the top-page of Fukushima University, in Japanese.

Still Uncertain

2005-03-10T23:26:00.000-08:00

I'm still having a hard time making out how to make my daybook looking good. I'm not certain how this machine language does its work.The trouble is that I have a strong desire to make all of the words on the page with the limit of Basic English, but, here and there, words like "post," "comments," "links," "archives," or "trackback" come up. They are hard to be changed because they are parts of

About Me

2005-03-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

Name: Ryota IijimaWorkplace: Fukushima University, JapanPosition: Teacher (Assistant Professor)I'm a Japanese, married to a Japanese woman, with a son.

Ogden's List of 850 Basic Words

2005-03-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

The 850 words of Basic English are made of three different groups: 100 words for operations and so on, and 600 words for things, and 150 words for qualities.The 100 for operations, directions and other important works of making other words joined together are the truly necessary ones.The 600 for things are the NAMES of things, living or not living. Words like "look," "talk," and "walk" are the

My Friend's Blog

2005-03-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

Yasushi, or Ohyamasan, kindly put his notes on my Daybook. He first gave me the knowledge of "blog," a new form of day-to-day writing with bookmarks, by letting me see his blogs. He takes care, in addition, of the Japanese discussion group on Basic English.

The Basic Books

2005-03-08T03:05:00.000-08:00

I have a 32-page newsletter, which was made public in 1938. What is in the letter, all of it, is an advertisement of books on and in Basic English. The most of the words used in the newsletter are Basic words, so the letter is a good guide in Basic to books on Basic. Using a scanner, a machine which takes picture of a paper, I have made it online.

Blog: An Online Daybook

2005-03-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

There are insect-like, eight-legged, small animals named "spiders." The spider, or any spider, gives out thin and sticky threads, and make up a loose net which goes by the name of "web." This word "web" is used for anything like a spider-web, any loose network.The greatest web in existence is on the international network of machines. It is as wide as the "world," all over the Earth, so it was

I. A. Richards

2005-03-04T15:10:00.000-08:00

Ivor Armstrong Richards gave helps and suggestions to Ogden when he was making up Basic English.Richards then became a very noted expert of English verse, and got a teacher's position at his college in Cambridge. Though his school-room was full of interested young men when he gave a talk on noted verses, he was not very happy. He got more and more interested in teaching English to early learners.

C. K. Ogden

2005-03-04T00:23:00.000-08:00

" title="permanent link">Basic English was first made by an Englishman of great knowledge: Charles Kay Ogden.When Ogden and his friend I. A. Richards were talking about senses of words, they got an idea that it was possible for them to give an account of the senses of any English word by using a limited number of words. Ogden kept on working for 10 years and came up with an English-based new

Basic English

2005-03-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

Most of the writings in Ryota's Daybook will be in Basic English. It is a sort of English language which seems, to any reader of English, like general English. It is, in fact, a specially designed language using simple rules of structure and word-forms, internationally noted words, and most necessary 850 words.