Specialized English

Specialized English is a method of radio broadcasting in English. It is easier for non-native speakers of English to understand. It is derived from Voice of America (VoA) Special English.

Specialized English sounds the same as Special English, and it almost is the same. Both use a 1500 word core vocabulary, short sentences, and slow delivery (about 90 wpm). Special English was developed from about 1959 by Voice of America. Specialized was developed from Special in the late 1990's, independently of Voice of America. The developers of Specialized felt they should choose a name that acknowledged both the similarity and the difference. The methodological ethos is identical, but there is a slight difference in the vocabulary, and Specialized is more international.

Specialized English was developed initially by Feba Radio in the UK. Feba now uses Specialized English in partnership with US broadcasters [http://www.woh.org Words of Hope] and [http://www.btgh.org The Back to God Hour] . All three are Christian religious broadcasters, but Specialized English is not used for religious preaching programs. Its main use is in the features service program 'Spotlight', which is widely broadcast on over sixty outlets globally. Scripts and audio are also available freely on the [http://www.spotlightradio.net Spotlight website] .

Specialized English operates in the civil society sector, and the developers aspire to make programmes for a variety of public service purposes, subject to resources being available. VoA is a federal US government department so is restricted from making Special English programs for anything other than VoA's own use.

The reason that Specialized was developed from Special English has to do with their respective intended usage. They are not primarily teaching tools (even though they are popular with listeners as an aid to learning) but communication tools. The choice of words in the [http://www.spotlightradio.net/wordlist.php 1500 word list] depends to a degree on what is to be communicated. Most of the words are the most frequently learned, most commonly used English words. Both tools use these words. But many words are chosen for the intended purpose. For example, Special English uses words a US government news broadcaster might need, such as Congress, federal, administration, capitalism and recession. Specialized replaces some of these words with words used for religious subjects, such as blessing, prayer, miracle, and faith. Further revisions of the Specialized English list were made in 2000 and 2007, in the light of experience. Still, the overlap of the two vocabularies is 91.3%. The Specialized English word list allows greater breadth of meaning in some of the words used in both lists. For example, the word 'joint':

Special: joint - ad. shared by two or more

Specialized: joint - ad. shared by two or more; n. the place where two parts or things are fixed together.

Specialized also allows more prefixes and suffixes, which has allowed some words to be removed from the core list. (eg: wonderful not needed in the list because it can be built from wonder+ful)

As well as the [http://www.spotlightradio.net/wordlist.php 1500 word core vocabulary] , both Special and Specialized English also generally allow: inflections of the core words, numbers up to a million, pronouns, proper nouns, and any words whose meaning can be communicated in real time (in a radio broadcast) using the core vocabulary.

The following table lists some differences between the two methods.