Small vocabulary of Special English expands Voice of America reach

Broadcast lexicon of 1,500 words a boon to many outside U.S.

By Holli Chmela
New York Times News Service
Published: Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2006 11:12 a.m. MDT
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WASHINGTON — Voice of America, the government-sponsored news organization that has been on the air since 1942, broadcasts in 44 different languages — 45 if you count Special English.

Special English was developed nearly 50 years ago as a radio experiment to spread American news and cultural information to people outside the United States who have no knowledge of English or whose knowledge is limited.

Using a 1,500-word vocabulary and short, simple phrases without the idioms and cliches of colloquial English, broadcasters speak at about two-thirds the speed of conversational English. But far from sounding like a record played at the wrong speed, Special English is a complicated skill that takes months of training with a professional voice coach who teaches how to breathe properly and enunciate clearly.

Mario Ritter, a Special English writer and producer, arrived at Voice of America five years ago with many years of experience. Ritter has been training for six months to be a Special English broadcaster. In August, he said, he would be ready to go on the air live.

"It's kind of ironic that I normally speak slowly, but it doesn't give me a leg up in being a Special English broadcaster," Ritter said.

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Shelley Gollust is chief of Special English at Voice of America. "People in this country have likely never heard of Special English," Gollust said, "and, if they have, they often don't understand the significance of it to people in other countries. They hear it and make fun of how slow it is."

A 1948 law prohibits Voice of America from broadcasting in the United States, but audio and text files of Special English are on the Voice of America Web site, www.voanews.com/specialenglish.

Students and teachers in other countries say Special English is a good learning tool. "I like that the program is based on 1,500 words," Sarah Paulsworth said in an e-mail message from Azerbaijan, where she works as a journalist and a volunteer English teacher. "It is a very tangible goal for students. I can literally see some of my students counting the words they know. "

The link between learning English and learning about America has been a constant thread in the debate in Congress this year about revising immigration policy.

But at home, the Special English branch at Voice of America would support the use of its programming for recent immigrants in a bilingual model if the law did not prohibit it.

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