An International Language

Some languages are spoken by quite small communities and they are hardly likely to survive. Before the end of the twentieth century many languages in Africa, Asia, and America will have passed into complete oblivion unless some competent linguist has found time to record them. The languages that remain are constantly changing with the changing needs and circumstances of the people who speak them. Change is the manifestation of life in language. The great languages of the world, such as English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and Arabic, are just as liable to change as Swahili, Tamil, or Choctaw. Change may, it is true, be artificially retarded in special conditions: for example in the great liturgical languages of mankind, such as Sanskrit, the language of the orthodox Hindu religion of India; or Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism; or Latin, the liturgical language of the Roman Church. By arduous schooling a man may train himself to read, write, and converse in these crystallized forms of speech. Sanskrit, Pali, and Latin are magnificent and awe-inspiring exceptions to the otherwise universal principle of change. Their immutability depends upon two main factors or conditions: first, that they are not normally used in everyday conversation, but are entrusted instead to the care of a privileged class of priests and scholars; and secondly, that they possess memorable recorded literatures and liturgies which are constantly read and recited in acts of religious devotion and worship.

It is just because these two conditions do not apply to artificial languages like Volapuk, Esperanto, and Ido, that they, however carefully devised and constructed, cannot come alive and then escape from the law of change. Over one hundred artificial languages have been framed by men in recent times, but the three just named are far more widely known and used than any others. Volapuk, or 'World's Speech', was created by a Bavarian pastor named Johan Martin Schleyer, in 1879, when it was acclaimed with enthusiasm as the future universal speech of mankind. Only eight years later, however, many of Volapuk's most ardent supporters abandoned it in favour of the system invented by the 'hopeful doctor', Doktoro Esperanto, a Polish Jew named Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917). Esperanto is certainly an improvement upon Volapuk in that it is both more flexible and more regular. Even within Zamenhof's lifetime, however, the mechanism of Esperanto was improved in various ways, and in 1907 Ido (a made-up name consisting of the initials of International Delegation substantive suffix -o) was formulated. This Delegation included scholars prominent in various branches of learning, but its recommendations were not accepted by the main body of Esperantists who were reluctant to admit that all their well-established textbooks might now be out of date. Today Esperanto, and not its more advanced form Ido, is easily the first constructed language in the world and it has proved its worth at numerous international gatherings. It no longer aspires to supplant ethnic languages. Like those other artificial languages created in the twentieth century -  Edgar de Wahl's Occidental (1922), Otto Jespersen's Novial (1928), Guiseppe Peano's Interlingua, or Latino sine Flexione (1908), and Lancelot Hogben's Interglossa (1943), and many more - Esperanto can be regarded as a valuable bridge-language which any man may find unexpectedly useful in unforeseen contingencies. Learning Esperanto is a pleasant pastime, and manipulating its regularized affixes and inflections may become a healthy form of mental gymnastics. Nevertheless, even loyal esperantists have been known to chafe and strain under the necessary bonds of orthodoxy. However much society may desire and demand that it should remain constant, 'language changes always and everywhere'. In the New World, where opportunities are limitless and enthusiasm boundless, and where whole families have been reputed to adopt Esperanto as their everyday language, it has become modified considerably within the space of one year to suit the special circumstances and way of life of that particular community. The worlds in which different social communities live are separate worlds, not just one world with different linguistic labels attached. An American and a Russian may converse pleasantly in Esperanto about travel, food, dress, and sport, but they may be quite incapable of talking seriously in Esperanto about religion, science, or philosophy. 'Men imagine', as Francis Bacon said long ago, 'that their minds have command over language: but it often happens that language bears rule over their minds.' Whether we like it or not, we are all very much under the spell of that particular form of speech which has become the medium of discourse for our society.

(From Language in the Modern World, by Simeon Potter.)