learner to fish for a periphrastic definition. Consequently, our list of picturable names is almost twice as large as that of Basic English. Basic offers 25 botanical or zoological and 34 anatomical words. Chapter IX of this draft lists 80 botanical or zoological and 68 anatomical terms as numbered items, in addition to 60 plant, animal or medical names not numbered because assimilated without change of the internationally current form.

Choice of words in Ogden's Basic list depends on the exigencies of accepted English usage. So also choice of words in a language designed in accordance with the principles stated above depends less on abstract logical principles than on what internationally current root material is to hand. The system of word-economy implicit in the design of Interglossa makes it possible to do with less than 750 words what Basic does with 850; but it would be absurd to restrict the vocabulary within such limits, if only because Basic has a ready-made residual stock-in-trade on which to draw. In a certain sense this is true of Interglossa, since Interglossa permits coining of new amplifiers or substantives from internationally current roots in accordance with rules prescribed for terminals. None the less, the English dictionary is more accessible than those technical works in which internationally current roots abound.

Common nouns come last in the classes of words arranged in what follows. It is necessarily arbitrary to fix the number of essential common nouns, because every occupation and social group within a speech-community has its own peculiar ones. Even novels abound in technical terms which are mere expletives to most readers. One thing which simplifies our task is the fact that an interlanguage word-list need contain no national names, i.e. words for specifically local institutions (casino, bazaar), officials (kaiser, concierge), proper names (Stalin, Leningrad), or implements (samovar, sjambok). It will tolerate such words automatically, as so often happens in the history of natural languages. This means that people of any speech-community have the last word about how to spell their own towns (Wien, København), or countries (Deutschland, Suomi); and the same words serve as adjectives (e.g. Scotch tweed = Scotland texti). Another class of words calls for similar treatment. Few people talk about gills and fins, unless they have some technical interest in comparative anatomy: Those who have, will know the internationally current terms (branchia and pterygia) for them.

At this point, a necessary qualification to preceding remarks will forestall misunderstanding at a later stage. Semantic rectitude does not prescribe that juxtaposition of two vocables