The Second Coming of Noah Webster

Greetings Fellow Lexicographers:

I have to admit it--I'm a lexicographic (word) freak. While in college, I spent many late nights in the campus library thumbing randomly through the O.E.D. (Oxford English Dictionary, the official bible of our language) in a fascinating quest to learn the etymology (history, source, derivation) of the more than 60,000 English words we have available for communication. If you're typical of most Americans you are probably functional with, at most, 1200-1500 words which is kind of pathetic if you think about it. Along my scholastic journey, I invested considerable effort studying the work of British lexicographer Charles K. Ogden, the inventor/developer of Ogden's Basic English. In a nutshell, Ogden's Basic is a set of 850 words that can be used along with articles, prepositions and pronouns and the verbs "to have" and "to be" to communicate about 90% of everything you need to say in English. Recalling this trip I made into the dark recesses of academia's closet resulted in a...

B R A I N S T O R M!!! Is that a light bulb flashing over my head???

and I said to myself: "Self, why not create a Korean-English and reverse dictionary of Ogden's 850 and use it to speed up the process of learning English for your students?"

So......with the translational help of my teacher friend Min-hi, I'm playing at being the Noah Webster of Korea and we will publish a rough first version of the first edition of Teacher Bill's "Words for the Wise" ( a little play on words--get it?) Dictionary hopefully next month. I have some other content ideas, but the basic dictionary comes first. I'm playing with the idea of a global enterprise built around trashing the way English is taught as a foreign language and introducing something simple, but revolutionary and easy to use and targeted to younger learners. I have to sign off now and finish up the copyright application I'm preparing. I also need to finish this week's lesson outlines and read up on how to use the light pen that came with my new electrified English classroom.

So much to do and so little time!

Never at a loss for words,
Bill