International Language Part 17

_Casopis Ceskych Esperantista_ (Bohemia).

_L'Amerika Esperantisto_ (central American organ, supported by groups in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles).

_La Lumo_ (Montreal).

_Antauen Esperantistoj_ (Peru).

_Brazila Revuo Esperantista_ (Brazil).

_La j.a.pana Esperantisto_ (j.a.pan).

_La Pioniro_ (India).

_Espero Katolika_.

_Foto Revuo_.

_Socia Revuo_.

_Unua Paso_.

_Espero Pacifista_.

_Eksport Jurnalo_.

_Esperanta Ligilo_ (for the blind-in Braille).

_The New International Review_ (Oxford) recently presented a four-page Esperanto supplement to its subscribers for some months.

(_b_) _Present State of Esperanto in England_

The most practical way of spreading Esperanto is to get it taught in the schools, so it will be best to state first what has been done so far in this matter.

Esperanto has been officially accepted by the local educational authorities in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and other provincial towns; that is to say, it has been recognized as a subject to be taught in evening cla.s.ses, if there is sufficient demand. At present there are cla.s.ses under the London County Council at the following schools: Queen's Road, Dalston (Commercial Centre); Blackheath Road (Commercial Centre); Plough Road, Clapham Junction (Commercial Centre); Rutland Street, Mile End (Commercial Centre); Myrdle Street, Commercial Road; and Hugh Myddleton School, Clerkenwell. Other cla.s.ses held in London are at the Northern Polytechnic, Holloway Road; St. Bride's Inst.i.tute, Bride Lane; City of London College, White Street; Co-operative Inst.i.tute, Plumstead; Working Men's College, St. Pancras; Stepney Library, Mile End Road; and a large cla.s.s for teachers is held at the Cusack Inst.i.tute, Moorfields.

At Keighley, Yorks, the Board of Education has recognized the language as a grant-earning subject. Various local authorities give facilities, some paying the teacher, others supplying a room. Among these are Kingston-on-Thames (Technical Inst.i.tute), Rochdale, Ipswich (Technical School), Grimsby, etc.

It does not appear that Esperanto is yet taught in any public elementary school; educational officials, inspectors, etc., have yet to learn about the language. Many private schools now teach it, and at least one private girls' school of the best type teaches it as a regular subject, alongside French and German. It has been impossible to get any return or figures as to the extent to which it has penetrated into private and proprietary schools. The Northern Inst.i.tute of Languages, perhaps the most important commercial school in the North of England, held an Esperanto cla.s.s with sixty-three students.

Two large examining bodies-the London Chamber of Commerce and the Examination Board of the National Union of Teachers-have included Esperanto in their subjects for commercial certificates. At the London Chamber of Commerce examination in May 1906 the candidates were as follows:

Entries. Pa.s.ses.

Teacher's diploma . . . 6 1 Senior . . . . . 15 15 Junior . . . . . 109 67 --- --- 130 83

There is now a Teachers' Section of the British Esperanto a.s.sociation with an Education Committee, which is carrying on active work in promoting Esperanto in the schools.

At an official reception of French teachers in London last year by the Board of Education, Mr. Lough, speaking on behalf of the Board, made a sympathetic reference to Esperanto. The incident is amusingly told in Esperanto by M. Boirac, Rector of Dijon University and a noted Esperantist, who was amongst the French professors. Not understanding English, he was growing rather sleepy during a long speech, when the word "Esperanto" gave him a sudden shock. He thought the English official was poking fun at him, but was relieved to hear that the allusion had been sympathetic.

At this year's meeting of the Modern Language Society at Durham, the Warden of Durham University, Dean Kitchin, in welcoming the society to the town and university, gave considerable prominence in his speech to Esperanto, remarking that, to judge by its rapid growth and the sanity of its reformed grammar, one might easily believe that it will win general use.[1] Such references in high places ill.u.s.trate the tendency to admit that there may be something in this international language scheme.

[1]He continued: "To me it seems that Esperanto in vocabulary and grammar is a miracle of simplicity."

There are now (May 1907) seventy local Esperanto societies in Great Britain on the list of societies affiliated to the British Esperanto a.s.sociation, and often several new ones are formed in a month. The first were Keighley and London, founded 1902. Seven more were formed in 1903; and since the beginning of 1906 no less than thirty-six. Besides the members of these there are a great many learners in cla.s.ses and individual Esperantists who belong to no affiliated group. Every month one reads lists of lectures given in the most diverse places, very often with the note that a local club or cla.s.s resulted, or that a large sale of Esperanto literature took place. Sometimes the immediate number of converts is surprising: e.g. on April 22, 1907, after a lecture on Esperanto at the Technical College, Darlington, seventy-eight students entered their names for a week's course of lessons to be held in the college three times a day.

There are now Esperanto consuls in the following towns: Bradford, Chester, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Hull, Hunslet, Keighley, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, Oakworth, Plymouth, Rhos, Southampton, and St.

Helens. Birmingham has within the last few months taken up the cause with its usual energy, and now has a large cla.s.s.

In England the universities have been slow to show interest in Esperanto; but now that Cambridge has been selected as the seat of the Congress in 1907, the university is granting every facility, as also is the town council, in use of rooms and the like, and some professors and other members of the university are cordially co-operating. Last October Prof. Skeat, one of the fathers of English philology, took the chair at a preliminary meeting, and made a speech very favourable to Esperanto. He said, "I think Esperanto is a very good movement, and I hope it will succeed." The subject of Esperanto is being well put before the teachers of Cambridges.h.i.+re, and the railway companies all over the country and abroad are granting special fares for the congress.[1] It is probable that the overwhelming demonstration of the possibilities of this international language will open the eyes of many who have hitherto been indifferent, and that the movement will enter on a new phase of expansion in England, and through the example of England, which is closely watched abroad, in the world at large.

[1]It is a striking fact that six weeks before the opening of the congress 700 members have already secured their tickets.

IX

LESSONS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE FOREGOING HISTORY

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), Muller (1681), Lobkowitz (1687), Besuier (1684), Solbrig (1725), Taboltzafo (1772), and continuing down to the present day. The striking success of Volapuk 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 a.s.sent 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 Volapuk. Good examples of its operation are afforded by the slowness of Germany to recognize Esperanto, and by the criticism of Prof. Munsterberg (formerly of Freiburg, Germany) in America, based as it is on an old German criticism of Volapuk, and transferred at second-hand to Esperanto.

Hence every effort should be made to induce critics of Esperanto to examine the language before p.r.o.nouncing 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 subst.i.tute 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 cla.s.sification 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 Volapuk 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 "Tolerations," 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 const.i.tuent 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.

Take the Esperanto suffix _-in-_, which denotes the feminine.

" " " prefix _mal-_ " " " opposite.

" " " suffix _-ig-_ " " causative action.

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 j.a.panese 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.

PART III