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قراءة كتاب Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education

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Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education

Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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logical, and entirely free of all irregularities. Prof. Mayer, of the University of Oxford, learned Esperanto in his seventy-ninth year. I heard him make a speech in the language about six or seven days after he took it up, and he declared that Esperanto ought to be introduced into the educational system of the country. He was professor of the Latin language at the Oxford University. He declared Esperanto ought to be introduced into the schools, into the kindergartens, where children of 5 years of age should begin with Esperanto, and I hold with him, because if children were to learn Esperanto it would be of help to them in their English. It is extremely easy to learn and can be learned in a very pleasant fashion, because it is so scientific and so simple. (5)

If children understood Esperanto, they would understand English better, and much of the time we waste in trying to teach them English would be profitably spent, for they would have something to go upon, something to compare English with, and that something so scientific and so logical as Esperanto. Take, for instance, analysis. I will not say it is difficult but I will say it is impossible to analyze an English word, because every word can be so many things. It can generally be an adjective, a noun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction, and an interjection, that is, the same word, without any structural change, so that it is difficult for a child to discriminate and label the word. Take the word "benefited." That might be used in the past tense (I benefited), or as a past participle: (We may have benefited), and it is impossible for a child to sense the difference, and such confusion occurs to a great extent with most words in the English language.

I am a teacher of languages and have done nothing all my life but study and impart languages. If I had to teach you gentlemen, say, French upon the theory that you were going on an important mission this day 12 months, and that it was absolutely necessary that you should speak French (or any other language that I could impart you) by that time, I would say it was impossible for a number of busy men to acquire a new language inside one year; that I could not guarantee useful results, but that if you would take two months to start with for the learning of Esperanto, then I might be able to teach you the other language in the rest of the time, because Esperanto is the best foundation for learning any language. And, as I say, an English-speaking student, be he young or old, knowing Esperanto would more easily distinguish the parts of speech in English and possess a real and valuable "linguistic feeling" (which he now entirely lacks) because of his Esperanto.

The Chairman. Is Esperanto made up of the derivatives of the various languages?

Prof. Christen. I will explain that, if you like, in a very few words. Esperanto is the work of a Polish scholar, Dr. Ludovico L. Zamenhof, who started with an inspired mind. I should say he was a great genius. He had studied a large number of languages, for, as a boy, nay, as a child in the cradle, he spoke four languages, because so many different languages were actually spoken in his home town. Then at school he learned several more and it is due to this polyglotic experience and the evils caused daily by Babel in his own circle that as a child, almost, he conceived the idea of constructing a language

that should at once and for all time put an end to a foolish and intolerable situation. He must have been inspired in what he did, because he at once hit upon the only possible solution of the thing, and he hit upon it without knowing that scores of others, older and more learned, had tried the same thing and failed. His first stroke of genius was in the composing of his entire vocabulary by borrowing all his words from well-known sources. With the true insight of the genius he decided that the words of an artificial international language must be taken from international sources, and so he first of all hit upon the good idea to use first of all those words which are already common to most languages, and there are a great many more such words than we have dreamed of. He decided that that should be the starting point of his world tongue, because everybody would know those words to start with. Take the names of animals and produce that come from certain parts of the world and carry their names with them, such as elephant, tiger, lion, camel, and a great many more. Take the rose: the rose is a rose in every language; so an orange, a lemon, a nut, and tea, coffee, and tobacco, etc., are the same in most languages. They may not be spelled the same or pronounced the same, but they are international, and therefore they are Esperanto. That was the foundation of the vocabulary in Zamenhof's new language—take words that everybody would know and use them in Esperanto (6).

Mr. Towner. How do you determine those common names?

Prof. Christen. Well, he formed his vocabulary; he selected these words because they were international—to the exclusion of anything else.

Mr. Towner. Well, that was not definite; it might be enlarged?

Prof. Christen. Oh, yes.

Mr. Towner. What was the vocabulary that he first issued?

Prof. Christen. Offhand, I think, about 963 words.

Mr. Towner. What is the vocabulary now?

Prof. Christen. Probably about 3,000 words. Now, I have dealt with the so-called international words; but the bulk of every language consists of what I would call home words, which every country has for its own; and the only way to bring equivalents for such words into the language was to select them from all the principal languages under consideration, which means, of course, the European languages and to select these words on the principle of greatest internationality—that is to say, such verbs as to come, to do, to write, etc., or the nouns, hand, knife, water, table, etc., or adjectives, like good, bad, healthy, etc. Before he put these words into his vocabulary, Zamenhof had their equivalents in all the European languages before him, and then he took from the whole list the root which was the most prominent, the root that occurred oftenest, and this became Esperanto, the idea being that the words selected should be common to at least four or five different languages.

Mr. Towner. You do not mean that, do you? You do not mean that the only words you would put into the Esperanto vocabulary would be those that might be common to at least four or five of the principal languages?

Prof. Christen. Yes; whenever it is possible to find such words, and the words do not conflict with the general harmony of the language.

Mr. Towner. That is what I thought you meant.

Prof. Christen. The consequence is that a language formed on these lines must be a Latin or Romance language because Latin gave birth to at least six languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Roumanian, and English, and besides, Latin and French have influenced and enriched the literature and languages of every other modern nation. The dictionary of Latin words contained, for instance, in Russian or German would be a very large volume indeed. It is a fact that all modern attempts at making an artificial language, and their name is legion, especially since the acknowledged success of

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