Euro

This page will display the complete grammar of English as an simplified international language for Europe.

Stress
The stress depends on each word but there is a growing tendency to place the accent in a fixed way on the penultimate syllable.

Writing system
Every word cannot be read exactly as it is spelled, there are certain intrinsic rules, but these rules are not taught, written words must be memorized regardless of their phonetics. The writing system was inherited in its entirety from British English orthography. By inherited standards, it does not accept diacritical marks and, in general, pronunciation is not predictable directly from the script. As in modern English, there are 26 letters and the apostrophe. Many words are spelled differently, as they are interpreted as compounds, so technically BSE uses its own spelling:

The hyphen also is used in writing to separate words that are compounds, so it has no phonetic value, rather it has an etymological value.

Grammatical categories: Introduction
To understand the development of BSE, it is essential to know how its vocabulary has been formed, as BSE has adopted many words from different European languages, especially Ancient Greek and Latin, as well as German and French. Its grammar is divided into closed and open classes. Closed classes do not usually accept borrowings, whereas open classes do.

Originally, BSE was a controlled word list based on the 5,000 most frequent words that every speaker should know, i.e. a CEFR C1. This word list was analysed in the form of lexemes and morphemes and, in order to standardise BSE, a selection of terms was made for closed classes, and only terms whose etymological origin could be traced back to Proto-Germanic [xgm], Latin [lat] or Ancient Greek [grc] were allowed, so that they would be predictable for Europeans. The parts of speech in BSE are:

Closed classes

 * Pronouns
 * Determiners
 * Articles
 * Quantifiers
 * Demonstratives
 * Possessives
 * Prepositions
 * Conjunctions
 * Numbers
 * Particles
 * Closed verbs
 * Auxiliary verbs
 * Phrasal verbs

Open classes

 * Verbs
 * Nouns
 * Adjectives
 * Adverbs
 * Interjections

Articles
There is a definite article and an indefinite article, which is used for all genders, numbers and cases.

Prepositions
No preposition governs any case.

Cardinal
The cardinal numerals do not change their forms for the different cases. They are:

Tens and hundreds are formed by simple union of the numerals following certain rules, are read in the order in which they are written.

Auxiliary verbs
not - /nɑːt nɒt/

let us > let's

SVO

To be
Infinitive be

Past was, were

Past participle been

To do
do not be

infinitive do/does

past did

past participle done

To have
Infinitive have

Past had

Past participle had

Modal verbs
dare > challenge

need > necessity

used > habit

Subjunctive

Conditional

Imperative

Potential

Presumptive

Inferential

Regular verbs
The regular verb does not change its form by numbers or persons. There are two forms of the participle: the adjectival (mutable), and the adverbial (immutable).

Passive voice
object (agent) + to be + past participle + by + subject (patient)

Irregular verbs
All verbs that do not follow the rules mentioned in the conjugation of one or more tenses are called irregular verbs.There are about 200 irregular verbs in English, many of them very common, including auxiliary and modal verbs. Most irregular verbs are conjugated without following the rules in the past simple and past participle, as you will see in this list. In BSE, the list of irregular verbs was drastically reduced in the first stages of language formation.

Open classes
To see the complete list of open class words go to dictionary, note that this list does not include the closed class words shown on this page.

Verbs
Verbs are roots that can be found in the dictionary.

Nouns
Nouns are roots that can be found in the dictionary. The plural is formed by adding "-(e)s" to the singular root, pronounced as /-ɪz/ ~ /-z/ ~ /-s/ depending on the consonantal context. Nouns do not decline by case, but cases can be formed using prepositions: thus the possessive/genitive with "of", the dative with "to", the instrumental/ablative with "with", or other prepositions depending on the sense they express, for example "for". Nouns are usually accompanied by articles.

Adjectives
Adjectives are roots that can be found in the dictionary. They are declined by number and case just like nouns. The comparative degree is formed with the suffix "-er", and the superlative degree is formed with the suffix "-est"; or instead, the comparative can be formed as "more" + adjective + "than" + noun, and the superlative as "most" + adjective + "than" + noun.

Adverbs
Los adverbios son raices que se pueden encontrar en el diccionario. Los grados de comparación son los mismos que en los adjetivos.

Word formation and derivation
Compound words are formed by the simple union of words that are written separated by a hyphen, where the main word comes last. Grammatical endings are considered independent parts and are added at the end without a hyphen.