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Comment by bloak | Hacker News Reader

Restricted subsets of a language are a useful concept, for some purposes, but Basic English itself is not a very good example. For example, if I remember correctly, Basic English doesn't allow the word "tolerate" but does allow "put up with". That's a false economy. Also, the "850" is deceptive advertising because there are various categories of word that are allowed in addition to the 850 words listed.

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> Basic English doesn't allow the word "tolerate" but does allow "put up with". That's a false economy.

That's a very good point!

"Put up with" is an idiomatic expression that native speakers may take for granted -- but it must be learned, in the same way as "tolerate".

In fact, it would be easier for half of the world to learn the word "tolerate", from the Latin "toleratus", than the expression "put up with".

(For instance: we use the word "tolerar" in Porguese and Spanish.)

There's also tolérer in french, tolerieren in german.

Phrasal verbs (such as "put up with") are one of the more frustrating parts of English to un-learn when trying to learn a foreign language. (I assume they're at least as frustrating to learn when learning English as well.)

A well-known Esperantist, Tim Morley, gives a great talk on phrasal verbs (which, Esperanto having none, tend to trip up English speakers learning it). Here it is in English: https://youtu.be/eQ_hXML4nWg?t=671 (I highly recommend the first half of that video too, on "quite", for its humor value.)

Indeed - the OED gives 419 senses of the verb "put", including as varied as

to put (a person or animal) out of (his or her) misery

Cricket. (a) (Of a fielder or wicketkeeper) to hit or break (a wicket), dislodging a bail;

to put one's feet up

I think `faire` is kind of the same in French - in various phrasal settings, it feels like an all-purpose verb for taking any sort of action. Although I guess that's more like 'do' which also has a bajillion uses in different contexts

More serious attempts to restrict the English vocabulary do limit the word senses, like the Longman American Defining Vocabulary [1] (which does contain an explicit counterexample of "put up with" ;-).

[1] http://www.longmandictionariesusa.com/res/shared/vocab_defin...

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