THE LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES NECESSARY FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN
INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE, WITH APPENDIX: CRITICISM OF
ESPERANTO
There exist more than sixty systems or attempts at an artificial
universal language, and considering the great diversity of these
languages, it might appear hopeless to arrive at unanimity
concerning any one of them. When, however, one considers the
question more closely, it appears that matters are not so bad as
one might imagine. Whereas twenty years ago the systems which
appeared were as different as day from night, at the present day
one perceives great lines of convergence, pointing to the time when
mankind shall have added to the other triumphs of civilisation
that of an auxiliary language recognised and used by everybody,
to the great advantage of all whose horizon is not limited by the
boundaries of their mother country.
Is it possible in a single formula to express everything that is
requisite for a practical international language? I think so, and
a brief consideration of the two reasons which prevent us from
choosing one of the natural languages as an international language
will enable me to arrive very quickly at this formula. The first
reason is, that such a procedure would unfairly benefit one nation
at the expense of all the others and would infringe the fundamental
principle of neutrality, which is necessary in all international
affairs. The second reason is, that every language is too difficult
for foreigners. All existing languages swarm with difficulties
of pronunciation, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and especially
idiom. It is very seldom that a foreigner succeeds, even after
years of study, in learning a language sufficiently well to avoid
occasionally making one of those mistakes which instantly betray
his origin to the natives; it may be a false stress, or a word
employed with an almost imperceptibly different shade of meaning,
or placed in a position in a sentence where the native would never
place it, or, finally, a phrase which, though logically correct,
is nevertheless not permitted by the usage of the language. On
account of their innumerable relationships and associations, which
is indeed what makes them so dear to the nations that employ them,
all natural languages are extraordinarily difficult, and therefore
unsuitable for the purpose of international intercourse. We
require, accordingly, a language which shall be not only neutral,
but also as easy as possible: easy to learn, easy to use, and easy
to understand.
These considerations bring me to the sought-for formula, which we
may express in a form similar to the celebrated ethical dictum of
Hutcheson and Bentham ("That action is best which accomplishes the
greatest happiness for the greatest number"):--
_That international language is best which offers the greatest
facility to the greatest number._
It may be objected, however, that facility is a subjective idea:
what is easy for one is not always easy for another. Quite so, and
it is exactly that observation which will serve us as a guide in
the investigation of the important conclusions which may be drawn
from our fundamental principle.
In the first place, as regards the alphabet and the pronunciation,
our fundamental principle leads to the choice of the Latin
alphabet, with the exclusion of all accented or otherwise
specially modified letters; neither _ä_, _ö_, _á_, _à_, _â_, _ç_,
nor the circumflexed _ĉ_, _ĝ_, _ĥ_, _ĵ_, _ŝ_, especially
invented by Dr. Zamenhof for Esperanto, can be tolerated, for
they hinder, and sometimes even render impossible, writing,
printing, and telegraphing. I have shown in the Introduction to
the international dictionaries of De Beaufront and Couturat how
our fundamental principle leads to the following alphabet and
the following sound values: _a_ (as in _father_), _b_, _c_ (like
_ts_), _d_, _e_ (like _e_ in _net_ or like _a_ in _fate_), _f_,
_g_ (always hard, as in _go_), _h_, _i_ (like _ee_ in _sweet_),
_j_ (either like E.[3] or like F.,[3] as in _journal_), _k_, _l_,
_m_, _n_, _o_ (as in _go_ or as in _not_), _p_, _q_ (_qu_, as in
G. or as in E.), _r_, _s_ (always unvoiced), _t_, _u_ (always like
_oo_, as in _too_), _v_, _x_ (as in G. or as in E. F. in the words
_exist_, _exister_), _y_ (as in E. F., and therefore like G. _j_),
_z_ (as in E. F., and therefore like the voiced North German _s_ in
_rose_), further the two double letters _ch_ (as in E., for example
_church_) and _sh_ (as in E., G. _sch_).
The strict phonetic canon "One symbol, one sound," is therefore
followed in so far as the same sound is never arbitrarily written
one way in one word and another way in another word, and the same
letter is never pronounced differently in some words compared
with the majority. The small exception that _sh_ and _ch_ are not
equivalent to _s_ + _h_ and _c_ + _h_ respectively cannot cause the
least difficulty to anyone, and the use of _qu_ and _x_ enables us
to retain the international spelling of many words, and, moreover,
permits two different pronunciations which cause no difficulty of
comprehension and simplify the pronunciation for several nations.
Otherwise we should be faced with the difficult problem of
choosing between _kwala_ and _kvala_, _eksistar_ and _egzistar_.
It must not be forgotten, too, that for our purposes the purely
theoretical canon "One symbol, one sound," must be subordinated to
the fundamental principle of greatest facility, of which phonetic
simplicity is itself only a consequence. Practical considerations
must, in fact, overrule theoretical objections whenever a small
deviation from the fundamental principle "One symbol, one sound,"
produces greater facility.
There remains to be discussed a matter of very great importance
for the phonetics of international language. Whilst all nations
pronounce without difficulty a series of sounds in which the vowels
alternate with single consonants, and almost all nations have
no objections to certain groups of consonants which are easily
pronounced (such as _tr_, _sp_, _bl_, etc.), the pronunciation of
other heavier groups, especially at the end of words, presents the
greatest difficulty to many nations. The French usually simplify
too complicated groups by inserting an unwritten vowel (as, for
example, in _Félix(e)_ _Faure_), Italians who speak English do
almost the same thing in the case of such groups as _kstr_ (_Greek
Street_) or _ksp_ (_sixpence_), and the phonetic usages of other
nations do not permit even as many successive consonants as
the Italians. In order to make matters as easy as possible for
everybody, one must avoid the mistake of _Neutral Idiom_, many
of whose words contained very heavy groups of final consonants,
endeavouring rather to follow the example of Esperanto, which
succeeded very cleverly by means of its predominance of vowel
terminations in producing not only grammatical clearness, but also
as easy and flowing a pronunciation as possible. In this way the
language becomes musical and pleasant to the ear.
We shall now proceed to the question of a vocabulary. In choosing
the majority of his stems, Dr. Zamenhof had already followed the
principle of maximum internationality, but the authors of _Neutral
Idiom_ were the first to carry out this principle scientifically
for the whole language. Their procedure was, however, somewhat
superficial, since in each particular case they calculated the
number of languages to which a given word was common. One must
not count the languages (and Latin especially must not be counted
along with the living languages), but the people who use them, for
languages are not organisms which possess an individual existence
independent of those who speak them. The proper rule, therefore,
for determining the internationality of a word or stem is to count
the number of people who understand it through their mother tongue.
This definition of the principle of maximum internationality is
simply a necessary consequence of the fundamental principle of the
greatest facility for the greatest number. It is natural that each
person would prefer the use of the greatest number of words which
are familiar to him, and so, to be impartial, we must attach the
same value to the individual preferences of the 120,000,000 who
speak English as to those of the 75,000,000 Germans, the 70,000,000
Russians, or the 50,000,000 French or Spanish, etc. Even the
languages spoken by the smaller nations must be taken into account
in proportion to their numbers.
The choice of the words for our neutral language is, therefore, a
pure question of arithmetic. Statistics of the number of people
who speak the different languages will not, however, furnish us
with a complete solution of the problem. In the first place, there
are to be found in the dictionaries technical words and special
terms which are only known to a minority of each nation. In the
second place, there occur cases where a word, though it does not
belong to a language, is, nevertheless, known through one or
more derivatives. For example, 100 is in English _hundred_, in
German _hundert_, in Danish _hundrede_, and yet the root _cent_
(_zent_) has been long familiar to the world through the terms _per
cent._ (G. _prozent_), _centesimal_, _centimetre_, _centennial_,
_century_, _centenary_, G. _zentner_, Danish _centner_. In
the third place, even when "the same word" belongs to several
languages, it very often possesses different forms, due mostly
to a different phonetic development, with the result that the
choice of a proper form is very often a delicate matter. The
sounds of the word "change," which the English and French write
in the same way, are very different; but as we can employ neither
the nasal vowel of the French nor the diphthong (_ei_) of the
most usual English pronunciation, _chanj_ would appear to be the
most convenient form for all. In very many cases it is possible
to find a common denominator for the different forms. Had not in
English and German the external form of many etymologically closely
related words diverged so much that it is impossible to find a
middle form (for example, water, _wasser_; tooth, _zahn_; speak,
_sprechen_; soap, _seife_; week, _woche_), the Germanic element
would have been the dominating one on account of the great number
of those speaking these two related languages. Such being the case,
the Romance element in English usually decides the matter in the
majority of instances, since it coincides with the French, Spanish,
and Italian, or at least with one of these languages, the result
being that our language necessarily possesses a Romance form in
a much higher degree than one might have thought. Another very
important circumstance (which I have hinted at previously) acts in
the same direction, the circumstance, namely, that numerous Latin
derivatives have passed over into the Germanic languages even when
the stem does not occur there. For example, German possesses the
words _absentieren_, _abstinenz_, _artist_, _dentist_, _dental_,
_moral_, _populär_, which greatly facilitate for a German the
understanding of the words _absenta_, _abstenar_, _arto_, _dento_,
_moro_, _populo_, although he does not possess them in his own
language (with the exception of _pöbel_ = _populacho_).
Sometimes there exists a very troublesome rivalry between two
words. In order to render the substantive "arm" (limb) the proper
word would seem to be the German, English, and Scandinavian "arm,"
until one makes the discovery that the same root "arm" in the sense
of "weapon" is still more international (E., F., I., S., supported
by _armée_ G., E., F., R., _armata_ I., _armada_ S., _armieren_
G., etc.), which compels us for "arm" (limb) to have recourse to
a Romance form. In other cases a more or less arbitrary change
of one of the series of words appears to be the only means of
avoiding confusing homonyms (namely, for door _pordo_ instead of
_porto_, on account of _port_ = carry), but this procedure must be
employed with great caution. Before everything else it is necessary
to avoid all disguising of words, which makes them unrecognisable,
aptly described by M. Blondel as a masquerade. This was set up as
a general principle in Volapük, and Esperanto is by no means free
from it.
As an example of the conflicts which occur now and then may be
quoted the expressions for the idea of "soul." "Soul" is the word
which would be immediately understood by the greatest number of
people, but we cannot employ the English diphthong _ōū_, as we
must be very sparing in the use of diphthongs, since they cause
very great difficulties in pronunciation. We cannot take over
the word in the form _sol_, because we require this for the word
"alone" (I. S. _solo_, internationally used in music, E. _sole_,
F. _seul_). G. _seele_, supported by the Scandinavian _själ_, is
not familiar to a sufficient number of people, and, besides, we
require the word _sel_ for "saddle" (F. I. S.). The French word
_âme_ will not do either, because it is not sufficiently well known
outside France, and, besides, there is a difficulty here too, for
_am-_ is absolutely required for the idea of "love" on account of
F. I. S. and many derivatives in E., not to mention the god Amor.
The use of the Latin _anim-_, which is the basis of the Romance
forms, is impossible, since we cannot do without the adjectival
termination _-al_, and _animal_ would then mean partly "relating
to the soul," partly "animal," which cannot be permitted in an
international language. We must resort to the device of changing
_anim-_ a little, whereby we get _anmo_. This example will show how
complicated the task frequently is of finding an international word
which will give rise to no confusion or misunderstanding.
The degree of internationality of the language of the Delegation
will be evident from the statistics of Couturat; he counted the
roots of the first dictionaries (5,379 in all) and found that of
these the following numbers occur in the national languages:--
French 4,880, _i.e._ 91 per 100
Italian 4,454 " 83 " "
Spanish 4,237 " 79 " "
English 4,219 " 79 " "
German 3,302 " 61 " "
Russian 2,821 " 52 " "
For all these languages the above numbers are relatively higher
than in the case of Esperanto.
One of the most effective means of simplifying the vocabulary of
a language is a carefully worked-out system of word formation,
which enables everyone, by means of a series of regular prefixes
and suffixes, to form with the greatest ease a large number of new
words, which are immediately intelligible to all who know the rules.
When one has judiciously chosen the roots which occur under
different forms in the various natural languages and also
selected the derivative terminations with all possible care, it
is astonishing to observe how great a number of words derived
with perfect regularity agree with the forms occurring in living
languages.
With regard to grammar, the fundamental condition to be required
of every system claiming to be an international language is that
of perfect regularity. Every exception to the rules only serves to
produce complications and to render the employment of the language
difficult and uncertain. If one knows the conjugation of one verb,
one must know the conjugation of all verbs, and so on.
In the choice of grammatical terminations the statistical method,
which served us for the purpose of the vocabulary, cannot be
strictly applied, because living languages diverge too much in
this matter. Nevertheless it does not leave us entirely in the
lurch.
Such cases as the dative and genitive and also the ablative,
etc., must be expressed by prepositions in conformity with the
tendency of Western European languages. It is advisable to have an
inflection for the accusative, although this is only intended for
occasional use, because in the great majority of instances there
is no necessity to distinguish it from the nominative. As neither
the Romance languages nor English and Scandinavian possess any
accusative inflection, and as the Slavonic languages do not give
us any help here, we are obliged to fall back on German, which in
the feminine and neuter has no inflection. The masculine, however,
in many cases has an _-n_ (_den guten knaben_). The fact that this
termination is also mostly used for the dative, as well as for the
infinitive, need not prevent us employing it in our language for
the accusative. It necessitates the use, however, of forms ending
in a vowel for the nominative of substantives (and adjectives and
pronouns). It may be remarked that _-n_ as an accusative inflection
is also found in Greek and Finnish.
The only vowels that can be employed in this connection are _o_
and _a_, which, as a matter of fact, occur very frequently as
the terminations of substantives and adjectives in the Slavonic
languages, as well as in I. and S. Since grammatical gender, as
distinct from sex, cannot be permitted in an artificial language,
it is not possible to employ _o_ and _a_ as in natural languages,
where the former is often, though not exclusively, used for the
masculine (I. S., but in R. and Polish for the neuter), and the
latter similarly for the feminine. One might be inclined to employ
_o_ for the male and _a_ for the female sex, with the result that
one would have no termination for inanimate things, abstract
ideas, or living beings whose sex is not a matter of importance
at the moment. The carrying out of this rule, however, leads to
considerable difficulties which would take too long to enter into
here. (This is one of the points which led to most discussion
in the Delegation Committee.) As a matter of fact, a very great
deal can be said in favour of the Esperanto usage of _o_ for
the substantive and _a_ for the adjective, and, as Couturat has
remarked, _la bona viro_ is not any stranger than the Italian _il
buono poeta_.
We need have no compunction in leaving the qualifying adjective
without inflection, as is done, for instance, in English. The
ending _-i_ is very suitable for the plural of substantives, being
used for this purpose in Italian, in Russian and the other Slavonic
languages, as well as in modern Greek; it is also tolerably
familiar to the English in foreign words, such as _banditti_. The
only termination which might dispute the honours with _-i_ is _-s_
(F., although usually silent, S., E., G. partly, and Dutch), but
_-s_ cannot be used if we employ the accusative termination _-n_,
as neither _virosn_ nor _virons_ could be permitted.
As regards the inflections of verbs, we are bound, if we want
a termination for the infinitive, to choose, according to our
fundamental principle, the _-r_ of all the Romance languages,
because neither the German _-n_, which we have used for other
purposes, nor the palatised Slavonic _-t_ (or _-ć_), can be
employed, and English possesses no inflection. We require a vowel
before the _-r_, the choice of which will be evident from what
follows. For the active and passive participles we need only
consider _-nt_ and _-t_ respectively, the vowels being also left
undecided for the present. The greatest difficulty, however, is
caused by the finite tenses, in which we must distinguish present,
past, and future. In this respect living languages differ so much
amongst themselves that the principle of maximum internationality
does not suffice, especially as the inflections of tense are
inextricably mixed up with those of person and number, which for
our purposes are quite unnecessary. The Delegation Committee have,
therefore, for the moment been unable to find anything better than
the Esperanto usage of _-as_ for the present, _-is_ for the past,
and _-os_ for the future. The same series of vowels may also be
employed for the infinitive and participles, so that the normal
forms are _-ar_, _-anta_, and _-ata_ (the final vowel _a_ here
being the adjectival termination), whilst _-ir_, _-inta_, _-ita_,
and _-or_, _-onta_, _-ota_, respectively may be retained for the
less frequent cases where one wishes to indicate expressly another
tense in the infinitive or participle. A few _à priori_ inflections
will not cause much harm in a grammar which is so easy that it may
be mastered in half an hour.
I have now arrived at the end of my investigation, in which I
have endeavoured to show the method whereby the language of the
Delegation has been constructed. The result is a language that
everyone can easily master, and which possesses the advantage
over other languages that it is based on rational scientific
principles and, therefore, need not fear that some fine day it will
be replaced by another and sensibly different language. Naturally
improvements will be effected in details where the fundamental
principles have not been sufficiently worked out, but the
foundation is sound, and the common auxiliary language of mankind
cannot differ very much from our "Internaciona linguo," or, to give
it a shorter name, "Interlinguo," or, still shorter, "Ilo" (from
the initial letters).
OTTO JESPERSEN.
APPENDIX
CRITICISM OF ESPERANTO
In connection with the foregoing some critical remarks on Esperanto
may be made, from which one will readily perceive the reasons which
made it impossible for the _Délégation pour l'Adoption d'une Langue
Internationale_ to adopt Esperanto in its present form as the
international auxiliary language.
Dr. Zamenhof has given us an interesting account of the way in
which his language gradually developed in his mind while he was
at the Warsaw Gymnasium. Before he arrived at the conviction that
the material for the vocabulary must be obtained from the Romance
and Germanic languages, and that the already existing stock of
international words must be used, he had "simply invented" his
words, that is to say, chosen them quite arbitrarily, but with
as much regard to system and brevity as possible. Although he
himself noticed that such words are difficult to learn and still
more difficult to remember, he has unfortunately retained in the
finished language a whole series of such _à priori_ formations,
which appear in words of such frequent occurrence as _who_, _how_,
_where_, _never_, _everywhere_, etc. The _nul tempe_ and _pro quo_
chosen by the Delegation agree, however, much better with the
general character of language than the _neniam_ and _kial_ of Dr.
Zamenhof.
Some peculiarities may be accounted for by the Slavonic mother
tongue of the author: for example, his preference for sibilants
and diphthongs, which is especially evident in the invented words
(_e.g._, _chi_, here; _chiu_, each; _ech_, even; _ghi_, that;
_ghis_, until, _gh_ and _ch_ being pronounced as E. _j_ and _ch_).
In an article in Zamenhof's _Krestomatio_ I find, for example (p.
288), _chiuj tiuj senantaujughaj kaj honestaj homoj_, _kiuj_,
_anstatau filizofadi pri ghi_, and (p. 293) _tion chi ankorau antau
la apero de la unua arta lingvo antauvidis kaj antaudiris chiuj
tiuj eminentaj kapoj_, _kiuj_, etc. The method of writing _x_ is
also Russian: _ekzameni_, _ekzemplo_, etc., and also _ekspedi_,
_eksplodi_; also _kv_ for _qu_. French words with _oi_ take _ua_
in Esperanto when they are spelt in this way in Russian, _e.g._,
_trotuaro_, _tualeto_, _vuala_; otherwise they are spelt with _oi_
or _oj_, _e.g._, _foiro_, _fojo_, _foino_. _Nacio_, _tradicio_,
etc., instead of _-iono_, is also Russian. Russian usage has
doubtless also inspired such word formations as _elparoli_
and _senkulpigi_ instead of the international _pronuncar_ and
_exkuzar_ (R. _vygovarivat'_ and _izvin'at'_, corresponding to G.
_aussprechen_ and _entschuldigen_). The peculiarity of using the
adverb instead of the adjective in such cases as _estas necese
vidi_, "it is necessary to see," is probably to be ascribed
to the correspondence of the Russian adverb with the neuter
predicate adjective. This rule cannot be permitted, however, in an
international language, because, with a free word order, it would
be impossible to say whether _estas vere necese_ means "it is
really necessary" or "it is necessarily true." The compound perfect
(_mi estas aminta_, "I have loved" = "I am having loved") reminds
one of the Polish _kochal-em_. Finally, the frequent use of the
adjective (in _-a_) instead of the genitive (_Zamenhofa lingvo_)
and of the two sorts of action expressed by _ek_ and _ad_ (_ekvidi_
and _vidadi_ used in many cases where the simple _vidi_ would be
sufficient) are to be accounted for by Russian usages.
Naturally I do not object to the importation of national
peculiarities into the international auxiliary language when the
latter is enriched thereby. For example, one must make use of
the facility for forming compound words common to the Germanic
and Slavonic languages in preference to the poverty of Romance
languages in this respect, and combine it with the more Romance
characteristic of forming new words by means of derivative
syllables. But peculiarities of national language which render
mutual comprehension and international usage difficult must be most
carefully avoided.
The unpractical nature of the circumflexed letters has been
indicated previously. It may be remarked here, however, that in
point of system Zamenhof's letters are very inferior to the similar
ones employed in the Czech language, since the parallelism in sound
between _s_ and _ŝ_, _z_ and _ĵ_, _dz_ and _ĝ_, is disguised by
the choice of letters. This produces a very amateurish effect.
Besides the familiar parts of speech which are indicated by special
terminations, Zamenhof invented a new class characterised by the
termination _-au_ (_kontrau_, _almenau_); but the limits of this
class, which includes some, but not all, adverbs and prepositions,
are not clearly defined.
Many words taken from existing languages are disguised, almost
after the fashion of Volapük: _boji_, F. _aboyer_; _parkere_, F.
_par cœur_; _shvit_, G. _schwitzen_, E. _sweat_; _char_, F. _car_;
_faruno_ instead of _farin_; _lerta_, F. _alerte_ (with a changed
meaning), etc. In this category is to be classed the astonishing
_nepre_ (entirely) which is derived from the Russian _nepremenno_,
just as if one were to take from the German word _unbedingt_ the
two first syllables and propose _unbe_ as an international word
instead of _absolute_. The economy in the use of stems was carried
much too far in Esperanto, necessitating the employment of all
sorts of compound words, the discovery of whose meaning requires
much racking of one's brains. The employment of all the derivative
syllables also as independent words is very ingenious, but produces
a very strange impression on the uninitiated.
The method of word formation is greatly wanting in precision, the
limits of the so-called direct derivation in particular being
not sufficiently clearly indicated. One example will suffice.
Starting out from _kroni_ = to crown, _krono_ ought properly to
mean crowning, instead of which it signifies crown, so that one is
forced to use _kronado_ for crowning, whereas, according to the
rules of Esperanto, _kronado_ must mean continuous or repeated
crowning, as if a king were being constantly or repeatedly
crowned.[4]
I have brought together here the most important defects in
Esperanto, the removal of which formed one of the tasks of the
Delegation Committee. The knowledge of these imperfections does not
prevent me from recognising the meritorious services of Zamenhof,
who, at a time when the question of the best construction of an
international language was not seriously discussed, succeeded in
producing one which was in many respects superior to the attempts
of that time, and which has proved in practice a serviceable,
though very imperfect, means of international communication.
OTTO JESPERSEN.