Semantography (World Writing): creating: further developments and Basic English
As a result of feedback at the first public lecture, Charles made changes and simplifications to his World Writing. As part of this process be hired a "critic" to criticize World Writing and find its flaws.
This work on World Writing is happening at the time when the occupying Japanese forces have announced that all Jewish refugees are to be housed in the Hongkew Ghetto (proclamation made 5 days before the first public lecture). All Jewish refugees must be in the Ghetto by May 18.
From my factory experience I knew that an inventor cannot look with impartial eyes on his brain chi1d. So I hired a language teacher to criticize with all his might. He was opposed to the whole idea. He was the right man to give it the coup de grace. For nearly two years, five evenings a week, he drove me almost crazy with impossible words and sentence perversions. I am a practical man and I would have given up, but the foundations of my system withstood the onslaught. Then I started to hope that - maybe - perhaps - I really got something. (SS 218)
As an engineer, specialized in making electric lamps, my professional hero was Thomas Alva Edison, who said, that the success of a work depends on 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. Perspiring in boiling Shanghai was easy, but trying to work in the evening hours after an exhausting day was another matter. I had established a photo and cine business in Shanghai in 1940. In 1943 the Japanese took away my workshop and living quarters as they did with all the other refugees, and herded us in a segregation area. Somehow I carried on and in the evening hours I tried to work at my “World Writing,” as I called it. I hired a language teacher for no other purpose than to keep me awake and fire criticism at my work. He drove me almost mad with his sentences which he asked me to translate into my writing. I am a practical factory man, who knows how to drop a thing which is not practical. But I found that my writing works, that it could become a practical reality. (SS 58-3)
Two months later over 12,000 refugees living in various parts of Shanghai had to move to the segregation area in the Japanese quarters of Shanghai. My wife and I took up quarters in a small room and kitchen and we had to begin life again trying to make a living by any means. For me it was the knowledge of having found something worthwhile to live for which made me forget all the hardship of the day. In the evening hours I worked at my “World Writing.” However, it was not easy because I was terribly tired, Having been deprived of an office and of my previous livelihood of a film service (making 8 and 16 mm, films and film titles) I was now forced to peddle around with cameras and was all day on my bicycle. After a while I got permission to enter the other quarters of Shanghai and from morning until evening I pedaled through the busy streets of Shanghai selling and buying cameras from private people. Consider the oppressive heat of Shanghai and you will realize that in the evening when I came home I was very tired. SS 104-2
Basic English
Basic English was first proposed in a publication in 1930 entitled "Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar", which was written by Charles K. Ogden. The premise of Basic English was that if you remove the redundancies of standard English and eliminate words that can be made by putting together simpler words, then the total vocabulary can be reduced to 850 words. The shorter vocabulary list (as compared to the 25,000 word Oxford Pocket English Dictionary) makes English easier to learn as a second language.
In order to keep awake I hired a man, Mr. Kars. He was a journalist from Vienna and hoped to make a living in Shanghai by establishing the school of Basic English. He failed in this because of the prime failure of Basic English which forces people to say “I have knowledge” instead of “I know” (see my writings on Basic English). However, Kars was interested in new language designs and above all, he was so poor and destitute that he was ready to do anything for money. He accepted therefore, my offer of evening work with enthusiasm and for 5 evenings a week he came up to our place, had a good meal and then we started work. In winter time when his little room was cold he could sit in our room. In the end, he turned against me, because I refused to fit my symbols to Basic English, when I later realized its great drawbacks. SS 104-2
We started work in May 1943 and began with finding appropriate symbols to the 850 words of Basic English. To be frank, I was so dead tired in the evenings that I dreaded the ringing of the doorbell announcing Mr. Kars. However, soon my old fascination took hold of me and we worked. (104-03)
She (Claire) was intensely interested in all I did, and already in Shanghai, although dead tired in the evening would sit still and listen to my discussions with a Mr. Kars from Vienna, whom I hired to fire as much criticism at my symbols as he could think of. (210-76)