(habe accido), living (habe bio) or the possession of any other abstract property (e.g. habe thermo).

Of operators which have no prototype in Basic, esthe, stimule, reacte and perde correspond closely to the usage of English verbs (experience, evoke, heed, lose) with extensive operative value. Thus dying is losing one's life; fading is losing colour; wilting is losing moisture; leaking (of a tyre) is losing air, being discouraged is losing hope. In short, the idiom of the operative system, while free from inevitable ambiguities and redundancies of accepted English usage, is in step with the evolution of the Aryan verb pattern.

The Next Step. By now the reader has all rules essential for writing and speaking Interglossa, or for translating Interglossa into the home language. If prepared to make the effort of being quite clear about the meaning of what he or she has to say, all that remains for the beginner is to master the list of essential vocables alphabetically arranged on pp. 249-256. Our next chapter is a heuristic intermission. It will show how anyone who has reached the Higher School certificate level in England, or has graduated from a junior college in America, can get over this hurdle in a few days, or at worst a fortnight. In an explanatory context, a single continuous narrative introduces Anglo-American or internationally current words containing one or other of each root used as a basis for word-material, with an appropriate reference number directing the reader to the corresponding vocable in Part II.¹

The qualification in the last paragraph calls for comment as a prelude to later chapters. In America, where Ogden's work has borne abundant fruit, the culture value of semantics is widely recognized. That one might be clear about what one means before one says or writes it, is a suggestion which will not necessarily offend the susceptibilities of the American reader. Before a British audience, an author needs to be more wary. Those who advocate linguistic education as a training for the mind have taken every possible precaution to prevent their pupils from thinking about what they do. A tradition of language-teaching which derives from medieval primers of Latin and Greek has perfected a system which every well-bred Briton expects to do its duty in a language text-book for which he pays cash down on the counter.

It first presents the purchaser with a prospectus of gram-