International Language - Walter J. Clark (e reader comics TXT) 📗

The extent to which more or less artificial languages are already used in various parts of the world for the transaction of interracial business, and the persistent preoccupation of thinkers with the idea for the last 200 years, culminating in the production of a great number of schemes in our own times, show that there is a demand for an international language, more perfect than has yet been available and universally valid. The list of languages proposed (see Part II., chap. ii.) by no means represents all that has been written and thought upon the subject. Many more have proposed solutions of the question, beginning with such men as Becher (1661), Kirchner (1665), Porele (1667), Upperdorf (1679), Müller (1681), Lobkowitz (1687), Besuier (1684), Solbrig (1725), Taboltzafo (1772), and continuing down to the present day. The striking success of Volapük and Esperanto in gaining, within a few years of publication, many thousands of ardent supporters has also been a revelation. It has proved most conclusively that there is a demand. If so many people in all lands have been willing to give up time and money to learning and promoting a language from which they could not expect to reap anything like full benefit for many years, what must be its value when ripened to yield full profits, i.e. when universally adopted?

There are two main obstacles to universal adoption. The first is common to all projects of reform—the force of inertia. It is hard to win practical support for a new thing, even when assent is freely given in theory to its utility. The second is peculiar to Esperanto, and consists in the discrediting of the cause of international language through the failure of Volapük. Good examples of its operation are afforded by the slowness of Germany to recognize Esperanto, and by the criticism of Prof. Münsterberg (formerly of Freiburg, Germany) in America, based as it is on an old German criticism of Volapük, and transferred at second-hand to Esperanto.

Hence every effort should be made to induce critics of Esperanto to examine the language before pronouncing judgment—to criticise the real thing, instead of some bogy of their imagination.

One bogy which has caused much misdirected criticism is raised by misunderstanding of the word "universal" in the phrase universal language. It is necessary to insist upon the fact that "universal" means universally adopted and everywhere current as an auxiliary to the mother-tongue for purposes of international communication. It does not mean a universal language for home consumption as a substitute for national language. In Baconian language, this bogy may be called an "idol of the market-place," since it rests upon confusion of terms.

Pursuing the Baconian classification of error, we may call the literary man's nightmare of the invasion of literature by the universal language an "idol of the theatre." The lesson of experience is, that it is well not to alienate the powerful literary interest justly concerned in upholding the dignity and purity of national speech by making extravagant claims on behalf of the auxiliary language. It is capable of conveying matter or content in any department of human activity with great nicety; but where it is a question of reproducing by actual translation the form or manner of some masterpiece of national literature, it will not, by nature of its very virtues, give a full idea of the rich play of varied synonymic in the original.

The great practical lesson of Volapük is, that alteration brings dissension, and dissension brings death. A universal language must be in essentials, like Esperanto, inviolable. If ever the time comes for modification in any essential point, it will be after official international recognition in the schools. Gradual reforms could then, if necessary, be introduced by authority, as in the case of the recent French "Tolérations," or the German reforms in orthography.

So long as the world is divided among rival great powers, no national language can be recognized as universal by them all. It is therefore a choice between an artificial language or nothing. As regards the structure of the artificial language itself, history shows clearly that it must be a posteriori, not a priori. It must select its constituent roots and its spoken sounds on the principle of maximum of internationality, and its grammar must be a simplification of natural existing grammar. On the other hand, a recent tendency to brand as "arbitrary" and a priori everything that makes for regularity, if it is not directly borrowed, is to be resisted. It is possible to overdo even the best of rules by slavish and unintelligent application. Thus it is urged by extremists that some of the neatest labour-saving devices of Esperanto are arbitrary, and therefore to be condemned.

Given the roots bov- (ox); fort- (strong); grand- (big): Esperanto forms bovino (cow); malforta (weak); grandigi (to augment); malgrandigi (to diminish).

These words are arbitrary, because not borrowed from national language. Let the public decide for itself whether it prefers a language which insists (in order not to be "arbitrary") upon borrowing fresh roots to express these ideas. Let any one who has learnt Latin, French, and German try how long it takes him to think of the masculine of vacca, vache, Kuh; the opposite of fortis, fort, stark; the Latin, French, and German ways of expressing "to make big" and "to make small." The issue is hardly doubtful.

Again, the languages upon whose vocabulary and grammar the international language is to be based must be Aryan (Indo-European). This is a practical point. The non-European peoples will consent to learn "simplified Aryan" just as they are adopting Aryan civilization; but the converse is not true. The Europeans will go without an international language rather than learn one based to some extent upon Japanese or Mongolian. The only prescription for securing a large field is—greatest ease for greatest number, with a handicap in favour of Europeans, to induce them to enter.