Now Mr. Turner opens his eyes. He gets a shock. His body is covered with red spots. There are spots on his hands, on his fingers, on his arms, on his legs, on his feet, on his chest. He jumps out of the bath. He takes a towel and rubs hard. The spots are still there."
And so is my old copy of "Einführung in die englische Sprache", whose terse Hemingway-style prose helped me take my first steps into the bewildering world of the English language. Then the Australian embassy sent me booklets in Basic English, designed by the British linguist Charles Ogden as an auxiliary international language of 850 words, comprising a system that covers everything necessary for day-to-day purposes. These 850 words, together with its five combinatory rules, were designed to do the work of some 20,000 words - and here they are! (under QUALITIES, there's beautiful, black, bright, brown, but not the most widely used expletive I encountered when I set foot in Australia!)
I've never since then built a rockery or lost an umbrella and I'm trying to stay away from doctors as much as I can, but I did apply for and worked in lots of job - more than fifty in more than a dozen countries at last count! As for complaining, who'd be listening anyway?
I've since expanded my vocabulary beyond those 850 words - although I've drawn the line at 'awesome', 'going forward', 'at this point in time', and 'LGBTQIA+' (when I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. Perhaps the war in Ukraine will reorder our priorities and restore some sanity) - but I still keep my copy of "Einführung in die englische Sprache" in case I missed anything!
