NEW YORK -- What distinction do the words genocide, embryo and visa share?
This year, all were added by the Voice of America -- the official broadcasting service of the U.S. government -- to the language it calls "special English," also known as "specialized English."
What, exactly, is specialized English?
If the phrase "specialized English" were written using only the 1,500 words that the language allows, it would have to be called "simple English."
Which is, in fact, what most people call it.
"Simple English" represents a catchall term for the various versions of English that use bare-bones grammar and a reduced vocabulary for cross-cultural communication, especially online.
"There are a number of simple Englishes," said Elly van Gelderen, who teaches the history of English at Arizona State University.
Beyond the VOA version is Aerospace and Defense Simplified Technical English, used by the European aerospace industry since 1986 to streamline communications -- especially in maintenance guides for commercial airplanes.
So planes won't crash because of bad grammar.
Another, called EasyEnglish, helps some Christian missionaries take their message abroad.
So souls won't be lost to verbosity.
The most influential version, however, is the first: basic English, developed in the 1930s.
With some modifications, it is still used at the VOA -- mostly for broadcasts to the Third World.
For Shelly Gollust, chief of special English at the VOA, removing words from the English language is a special art.
"It's almost like Hemingway," she said. "You can write something easy and direct, and it's more powerful that way."
The VOA has broadcast news in special English since 1959. Read at two-thirds average speed, these broadcasts are cobbled together from the 1,500 allowable words.
That list is updated once a decade. In the recent revision, 10 words, including tears and capitalism, were purged and 40 new terms, including Web site and behavior, were added. The new list includes some words commonly used in reporting news -- including corruption, genocide and abortion. Gollust called this group "very charged words."
