he Simple English Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia for people who are learning English. The
Simple English Wikipedia's articles can be used to help with school homework or just for the fun of
learning about new ideas. Non-English Wikipedias can also translate from the articles here.
Wikipedia started on January 15, 2001 and it has over 35,000,000 articles in many languages,
including 185,567 in Simple English. Most of these articles are in languages other than English.
Every day hundreds of people from around the world make hundreds of changes and create lots of
new articles.
Note: Wikipedia has pages that some people might think are bad, vulgar or mean. Read the
Wikipedia content disclaimer for more information.
Contents
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1What is the Simple English Wikipedia?
2Changing pages in the Simple English Wikipedia
3Simple English
4Proposals to close the Simple English Wikipedia
5Be part of Wikipedia
6Getting in touch
7Other wiki projects
8Related pages
9Wikipedia in other languages
What is the Simple English Wikipedia?
Articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use fewer words and grammar that is easier to understand
than the ordinary English Wikipedia. The Simple English Wikipedia is also for people with different
needs, such as children, students and adults with learning difficulties, and people who are trying to
learn English. Other people may use the Simple English Wikipedia because simple language helps
them to understand unfamiliar topics or complex ideas.
When the Simple English Wikipedia began, the ordinary English Wikipedia already had 150,000
articles, and seven other Wikipedias in other languages had over 15,000 articles. Since the other
Wikipedias already have so many articles, most Simple English articles take articles from other
Wikipedias and make them simple; they are usually not new articles.
This makes Simple English articles a good way to understand difficult articles from the ordinary
English Wikipedia. If someone cannot understand an idea in complex English, they can read the
Simple English article. For this reason, people writing Simple English articles should put in "interwiki
links" to and from the other Wikipedias. Also, it is good to always look at all versions in all
languages, to get new ideas.
"Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not" has a good list of things which we are not doing. These things are
a little different from the things the ordinary English Wikipedia does not do. For example, in the
Simple English version it is more important to explain slang, idioms, and jargon. The Simple English
Wikipedia also has some articles that are also in the Wiktionary.
Changing pages in the Simple English Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a wiki, a kind of web site written by many people together. This means anyone can
change any page by clicking on the "change this page" link. You can do this on any page that is
not protected. You can see if the page is protected because it will say "View source" instead of
"Change".
Anyone can write in the Simple English Wikipedia. Simple English writers are very mixed, more so
than at English Wikipedia, or at other Wikipedias. It is important to respect the different types of
people who are writing articles in the Simple English Wikipedia, and to be friendly with people who
have trouble speaking English. Remember that Wikipedia is a service which many communities use.
If you want to write articles for the Simple English Wikipedia, read Wikipedia:How to write Simple
English articles. See Wikipedia for a simple English introduction to the project in all languages,
and Wikipedia:Useful for a list of pages that can help you more. You can ask questions
at Wikipedia:Simple talk.
Any pages that you write and any changes that you make are yours. A license called the GNU Free
Documentation License guarantees that people will always be able to use and make copies of all of
Wikipedia including your pages and changes. Read the page about copyrights for more information.
Simple English
Main article: Basic English
Simple English is similar to English, but it only uses basic words.
We suggest that articles should use only the 1,000 most common and basic words in English. They
should also use only simple grammar and shorter sentences. Writers can also use a special system,
for example, Basic English. Of course, people can write original articles; these could be put in both
this and the English Wikipedia (with a normal level of English). Usually, only about 2,000 words are
enough to write a normal article.
Since some articles need more than the most common words, some complex articles use more
words. But even very basic concepts (zero, one, two) are too difficult to explain with a small number
of words.
For detailed writing about science, politics, or religion, articles sometimes need more words, but the
English must be simple. Sometimes, an article needs words not included in the Basic English
combined wordlist, but it explains all the difficult words. Articles may also need some complex words
because of the article names in the ordinary English Wikipedia, and to use normal words would
make the article too simple. Articles on scientific topics might also need complex words.
There are no rules about vocabulary, tense or suffixes. Some articles use only Basic English (850
words), but this wiki has no strong rules about which words can be used, as E Prime does. If a word
is not simple or not used often here, it should be explained on a new page.
Proposals to close the Simple English Wikipedia
There have been proposals to close the Simple English Wikipedia. Proposals in October 2007 and
in October 2008 lost. Another proposal was made in June 2018. That proposal resulted in the Simple
English Wikipedia remaining online.
Be part of Wikipedia
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Welcome, newcomers!, a place to start for new people.
Rules for how to behave on Wikipedia.
How to edit pages and do other things on Wikipedia.
Getting in touch
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Contact us
Simple talk, a place to ask questions
Wikipedia mailing lists
Bug reports and feature requests
Wikipedians, a list of people who help with Wikipedia
Meta Wiki, more about Wikipedia and other projects like it
Other wiki projects
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Wiktionary has a dictionary and thesaurus in lots of languages. They also have word
histories, translations, grammar rules, and pages about how to say words correctly.
There is a Simple English Wiktionary.
Wikibooks is a place that makes books, including online books for children and
cookbooks.
Wikiquote has quotations in every language.
Wikisource has public domain books and other writing.
Wikinews has free news articles and lots of people to talk about them.
Wikiversity is a free online school.
Wikimedia Commons has all the pictures, sound and videos ([media]) for all the Wikis.
Wikivoyage a travel site hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikispecies, a list of animals, plants, and other types of living things
Meta-Wiki is where people organize and talk about all the wikis.
Related pages
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Plain English Campaign
Readability test
Wikipedia:How to write Simple English articles
Wikipedia:Statistics
Technical evaluation of simplicity: A discussion and analysis of this topic
from WP:Simple talk in August 2016.
Wikipedia in other languages
5,000,000 articles or more
English • Cebuano (Cebuano)
1,000,000 articles or more
)cibarA( ‫(م صرى • ال عرب ية‬Egyptian Arabic) • Deutsch (German) • español )Spanish( • français
(French) • italiano (Italian) • 日本語 (Japanese) • Nederlands (Dutch) • polski (Polish) • português
(Portuguese) • русский )Russian( • svenska (Swedish) • українська )Ukrainian( • Tiếng Việt
(Vietnamese) • Winaray (Waray) • 中文 (Chinese)
500,000 articles or more
català )Catalan( • )naisreP( ‫ • ف ار سی‬suomi (Finnish) • Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) • 한국어
(Korean) • norsk (Norwegian) • српски / srpski )Serbian(
100,000 articles or more
Simple English • asturianu (Asturian) • azərbaycanca )Azerbaijani( • htuoS( ‫ت ۆرک جه‬
Azerbaijani) • беларуская )Belarusian( • български )Bulgarian( • বাাংলা (Bangla) • нохчийн
(Chechen) • čeština )Czech( • Cymraeg (Welsh) • dansk (Danish) • Ελληνικά )Greek( • Esperanto
(Esperanto) • eesti (Estonian) • euskara (Basque) • galego (Galician) • )werbeH( ‫ • עברית‬हिन्दी
(Hindi) • hrvatski (Croatian) • magyar (Hungarian) • հայերեն )Armenian( • ქართული
(Georgian) • қазақша )Kazakh( • Latina (Latin) • lietuvių )Lithuanian( • latviešu )Latvian( • Minangkabau
(Minangkabau) • македонски )Macedonian( • Bahasa Melayu (Malay) • မြန်ြာဘာသာ (Burmese) • norsk
nynorsk (Norwegian Nynorsk) • română )Romanian( • srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски )SerboCroatian) • slovenčina )Slovak( • slovenščina )Slovenian) • தமிழ் (Tamil) • тоҷикӣ )Tajik( • ไทย
(Thai) • Türkçe )Turkish( • татарча/tatarça )Tatar( • )udrU( ‫ • اردو‬oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча )Uzbek( • Volapük
)Volapük( • 粵語 (Cantonese) • Bân-lâm-gú )Chinese )Min Nan((
List of all Wikipedias – Languages working together – Start a Wikipedia for a new language