Andrew Gray wrote:
This is quite an interesting thought. The language used by Simple English is (apparently) derived from two defined "simplified versions" of English which were deliberately designed - have there been projects to do the same for, say, French or Spanish, or would we have to do the heavy lifting ourselves?
Work for easy-to-read Swedish was started in 1968, and since 1987 operates as a government-sponsored foundation, described in this Swedish Wikipedia article, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrum_f%C3%B6r_l%C3%A4ttl%C3%A4st
On that Swedish foundation's website, you can also find information about them in English, French, German, and Spanish, http://www.lattlast.se/
(Le Centre Facile à Lire; La fundación sueca de nombre Centro de Lectura Fácil)
Someone should compile an article on en.wikipedia about such initiatives in various countries. The article [[Simple English]] branches out to various special forms, but doesn't provide the international overview of the topic.