There is in fact a subset of English called (brilliantly) "International English" that is mandatory for writing of operation and maintenance manuals for many products produced for US Military, FAA, and NATO use. The vocabulary is strictly limited to a specified set of words, and my recollection is that it's only a very few (2 or 3?) thousand words. It appears that NATO agreements were the source for the idea, although I've never seen a detailed history of it.

The principal "rule" in application of this language is that any "object" must be described by one, and only one, word. Sometimes the rule is even observed, although I've seen manuals where the same part was the "generator," "alternator," "converter," "rectifier," and a couple of other odd ones within the space of a few pages. Even that is better than one author of note who used five different names for the same computor function in the same paragraph, and wondered why the proof/edit guys objected.

The vocabulary of a few thousand words is, properly used, sufficient to describe most machines and machine functions pretty clearly. Trying to describe any social, sexual, or emotional subject with a vocabulary that limited would make everyone sound like Kansas Baptists.

John