First, a point of agreement: McElvenny insists, in the title of his piece, that the linguist needs the historian, that is, that linguistic work needs a historical perspective. I couldn’t agree more. I think anyone familiar with publications based on the NSM approach will know that NSM researchers have consistently taken a historical perspective, and that we have given a great deal of serious and detailed attention to the work of past thinkers who engaged with the same questions, including Leibniz, Locke, Bentham, C.S Peirce, Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, and also Ogden. But there are also many other thinkers in the European intellectual tradition that we have deeply engaged in, including Descartes, Arnauld, Vico, Herder, Humboldt, and Baudouin de Courtenay.(See, e.g, Wierzbicka 2001).

And now to the disagreement. McElvenny alleges that Minimal English is far closer to Ogden’s Basic English than I and my NSM colleagues allow. In particular, he objects to the statement made by Cliff Goddard and myself in our joint chapter in the volume Minimal English for a Global World (Goddard ed. 2018): “The differences [between Minimal English and Ogden’s Basic] are actually enormous, in nearly every dimension: structure (words and grammar), intended range of functions, and in ’spirit’.” (p. 19)

I stand by this statement. I think the differences are indeed enormous. What seems to have rendered them invisible to McElvenny is his narrowly academic perspective, without interest in the potential of a given approach as a tool with which one can actually do something that is urgently needed in the world.

A key point which seems to have escaped McElvenny’s attention is that Minimal English is “convertible” into any other Minimal Language built on the foundation of NSM. The reason is that Minimal English is a form of English pruned of anything that is specifically ‘Anglo’. It is de-Anglified English. For example, seemingly plain English words like “fair” and “unfair”, or “right” and “wrong” and expressions like “what can we do about it?” have no place in Minimal English (see e.g. Wierzbicka 2006, 2014).

Ogden’s “Basic English” is not convertible English; it is a form of ‘Anglo’ English. The whole NSM approach and the Minimal English program derived from it are a massive onslaught on the Anglocentrism pervasive in the modern world, including in international relations, philosophy, science, the humanities (linguistics and anthropology included), and almost every other facet of modern life. (See e.g. Wierzbicka 1997, 1999, 2014).

In his introduction to the forthcoming volume Minimal Languages in Action (Palgrave), Cliff Goddard has illustrated the radical difference between Minimal English and Ogden’s Basic with two different renderings of the same story — a story that matters to millions of people in all parts of the Earth: the biblical story of an angel visiting Mary, Jesus’ mother, in Luke’s Gospel (1:28–31)

‘An Angel visits Mary’ in BASIC
And the angel came in to her and said, Peace be with you, to whom special grace has been given; the Lord is with you.
But she was greatly troubled at his words, and said to herself, What may be the purpose of these words?
And the angel said to her, Have no fear, Mary, for you have God’s approval. And see, you will give birth to a son, and his name will be Jesus.

‘An Angel visits Mary (Mariam)’ in Minimal English
The angel said: “I want to say something very good to you, Mariam. God is with you, God feels something very good towards you.” Mary didn’t know why this was happening to her. She didn’t know what she could think about it.
Then the angel said: “Don’t think like this, Mariam: ‘something bad can happen to me now’. Think like this: ‘something very good is happening to me now.’
In a very short time, something will happen to you; it will happen because God wants it to happen. Because of this, after some time you will give birth to a child (a son). You will call him Jesus.

As Goddard notes in his commentary on these two parallel passages, Ogden’s Basic is not particularly simple, if only because it brims with abstract nouns such as “grace”, “purpose”, “fear” and “approval”. Such words are very complex in meaning, are not used by English-speaking children, and are not cross-translatable into most languages of the world (many languages don’t have abstract nouns at all). By contrast, all the words used in the parallel passage in Minimal English are very simple in meaning, are used by English-speaking children, and as evidence suggests, are cross-translatable into all the languages of the world.

These are indeed enormous differences, which illustrate the main point of my post: Minimal English is the first ever reduced form of English in which global messages can actually be formulated. At some times and for some purposes such messages are badly needed. For example, they are badly needed when devising a charter of global ethics. They are also badly needed at a time of global crisis such as the time of the coronavirus.

McElvenny calls our comparisons of Minimal English and Ogden’s “Basic” ahistorical and accuses NSM researchers of ignoring differences between the intellectual and political context which shaped these two projects. But we were not seeking to pass judgment on Ogden’s “Basic”, or to assess its merits in the context in which it was created. Rather, we were seeking to clarify the main differences between these two projects for the benefit of those readers of our work who mistake Minimal English for something similar to Ogden’s Basic.

In fact the two projects are radically different and have fundamentally different goals. “Essential Messages for Our Time” couldn’t possibly be formulated in “Basic English”, and Ogden never envisaged such a possibility.

It is sad and ironic that in his extended response to my post on “Essential Messages”, McElvenny doesn’t even look at these messages and instead talks about something else altogether. To repeat the main point, and my main claim: for the first time in history, we can now have global messages formulated in simple and cross-translatable words, without Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism. This is not a small claim; and it is not a claim about the history of academic ideas. It is a claim about how people on earth can talk to one another and understand each other. It is a claim about Minimal Languages in action.

In the conclusion to my “Charter of Global Ethic” (2018) I wrote: “The globalized world needs a global ethic. But to be globally shared, this global ethic needs to be formulated in words and phrases that are cross-translatable. The ‘Charter’ proposed here may not be perfect, but at least it offers a possible platform for a global discussion, without excluding anyone and without privileging Anglo English. While it is formulated in words of Minimal English, it is at the same time expressed in what might be described as the vocabulary of ‘Common Human.’”

The same applies to “Essential Messages for our Time”. Their purpose is not to settle academic accounts, but to respond to the needs of the world that we live in, and to the special needs of our present time, the time of the pandemic.

References
Goddard, C. (ed.) (forthcoming/2021). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave.
Goddard C. (ed.) (2018) . Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication with Fewer Words.
Goddard, C. & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to global English. In Goddard (ed.), pp. 5-27.
Wierzbicka, A, 1997. Understanding Cultures Through their Key Words. NY: Oxford University Press
Wierzbicka, A. 1999. Emotions Across Languages and Culture: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge University Press
Wierzbicka, A. 2002. “Leibnizian Linguistics. In Istvan Kenesei & Robert Harnish, (eds.) A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. Pp.229-253
Wierzbicka, A. 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. NY: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A, 2014. Imprisoned in English. NY: Oxford University Press
Wierzbicka, A. (2019). What Christians Believe. The Story of God and People in Minimal English. NY: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2018). “A Charter of Global Ethic.” In Goddard (ed.) pp. 113-141. https://www.academia.edu/43993017/Charter_of_Global_Ethic_in_Minimal_English
Note
The BASIC text is from Luke 1:28-31 [http://ogden.basic-english.org/bbe/bbeluke1.html#2]. The Minimal English text is from What Christians Believe (Wierzbicka 2019: 84).

About 75 years ago when the Capitalist and Communist nations had reached a modicum of unity in their joint struggles against Hitler and Hirohito and when Basic English had a real chance at a really global tilt as a result of collaboration between PM Churchill and President F D Roosevelt, as famously voiced by the former in his WW2 speech at Harvard, it eventually became clear to a zillion students of Basic that they might as well be studying the real McCoy in order to really succeed in business or to enhance their careers and for avoiding prejudice based on one’s vocab range, to reference just one issue of justice.

Courtesy of the Churchill Centre, extracted in continuity from PM Churchill’s famous ‘malice to none and goodwill to all’ speech (official title of speech: ‘The Gift of a common Tongue’ delivered mid war to a rapt audience of anglophiles at Harvard University:

‘The Gift of a Common Tongue’ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/the-price-of-greatness-is-responsibility/
September 6, 1943. Harvard.
By Winston S. Churchill

“The great Bismarck – for there were once great men in Germany – is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.
That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.
This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other’s wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.

Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech – no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.

What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C.K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.

The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.

Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are the head-stream of what might well be a mighty fertilising and health-giving river. It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world – as we shall be able to do more freely than ever before as the science of the world develops – be able to move freely about the world, and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding. Might it not also be an advantage to many races, and an aid to the building-up of our new structure for preserving peace?

All these are great possibilities, and I say: “Let us go into this together. Let us have another Boston Tea Party about it.”
Let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect – let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all. Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”