Question

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

The guy who tried to edit English

The English vocabulary is not only huge, it is also full of words that mean practically the same thing. Get, obtain, acquire. Shine, gleam, glow, sparkle. 1.

That was the thinking of a British writer named C.K. Ogden, who in the 1930s promoted a new form of English with a vocabulary of just 850 words. He called the project Basic English. 2.

Ogden arrived at his 850-word list through experimentation. The words he finally included were not necessarily the shortest or most concrete. 3. Because any verbal (动词的) idea could be expressed with a small number of “operators”— words like come, go, take, have, make, be and do — Ogden argued that most verbs were unnecessary. In Basic English, eat is “have a meal” and forget is “go from memory.”

Winston Churchill was a fan of the concept as a way to get foreigners to speak English, and he encouraged the BBC to use it. 4. Roosevelt, who expressed mild interest, joked that Churchill’s famous speech about offering his “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to his country wouldn’t have been so exciting if he “had been able to offer the British people only blood, work, eye water and face water, which I understand is the best that Basic English can do with five famous words.”

5. Churchill didn’t use it either. When seeking to express ourselves, we don’t necessarily need fewer words; we need the right words. So it’s our benefit to have a large supply of words on hand.

A. Do we really need them all?

B. How many words are there in English?

C. Ogden himself didn’t actually use Basic English.

D. Plenty of seeming basic words did not make the list at all.

E. He also tried to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to promote it.

F. He believed it would make the language more efficient and easier to learn.

G. Despite attention from world leaders, Basic English never got as far as expected.

Answer 1