Three men on the Bummel [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES English books are written for the English, who have spoken English since they began to speak, and have read English since they began to read. They are not written for the foreigner. And with few exceptions he will not get from them what the Englishman gets from them; his vocabulary is too small. Books that are written in a vocabulary simple enough for him to read with ease are written for English children, and deal with subjects that only children and the childlike are interested in. Those that deal with subjects that the adolescent is in- terested in, are written in a vocabulary of such vastness that the adolescent foreigner cannot read them without constant recourse to a dictionary and consequent loss of just that pleasure that the books were written to give. In every school in the world in which foreigners are learning English, the teacher is crying out for books that will bring to the foreigner who is learning English some of the pleasures that the English classics bring to the English boy and girl. The series is intended as an answer to that cry. It is a series based on a few simple principles: (1) Common words are more important than less common words; see and touch than glare and fondle. (2) Common words should be and can be more easily learnt than less common words. (3) Modern scholars like Professor Thorndike and Dr. Michael West have at least begun to determine with precision which are the more common and which the less common words. (4) It is possible to "translate" any story of action in a vocabulary of less than two thousand words, into language which is genuine, idiomatic English, and which retains some of the individual charm of the original.