I

SOME EXISTING INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES ALREADY IN PARTIAL USE

Though the idea of an artificially constructed language to meet the needs of speakers of various tongues seems for some reason to contain something absurd or repellent to the mind of Western Europeans, there have, as a matter of fact, been various attempts made at different times and places to overcome the obvious difficulty in the obvious way; and all have met with a large measure of success.

The usual method of procedure has been quite rough and ready. Words or forms have been taken from a variety of languages, and simply mixed up together, without any scientific attempt at co-ordination or simplification. The resulting international languages have varied in their degree of artificiality, and in the proportions in which they were consciously or semi-consciously compiled, or else adopted their elements ready-made, without conscious adaptation, from existing tongues. But their production, widespread and continuous use, and great practical utility, showed that they arose in response to a felt want. The wonder is that the world should have grown so old without supplying this want in a more systematic way.

Every one has heard of the _lingua franca_ of the Levant. In India the master-language that carries a man through among a hundred different tribes is Hindustanee, or Urdu. At the outset it represented a new need of an imperial race. It had its origin during the latter half of the sixteenth century under Akbar, and was born of the sudden extension of conquest and affairs brought about by the great ruler. Round him gathered a cosmopolitan crowd of courtiers, soldiers, va.s.sal princes, and followers of all kinds, and wider dealings than the ordinary local petty affairs received a great stimulus. Urdu is a good example of a mix-up language, with a pure Aryan framework developed out of a dialect of the old Hindi. In fact, it is to India very much what Esperanto might be to Europe, only it is more empirical, and not so consciously and scientifically worked out.

Somewhat a.n.a.logous to Urdu, in that it is a literary language used by the educated cla.s.ses for intercommunication throughout a polygot empire, is the Mandarin Chinese. If China is not "polygot" in the strict technical sense of the term, she is so in fact, since the dialects used in different provinces are mutually incomprehensible for the speakers of them. Mandarin is the official master-language.

Rather of the nature of _patois_ are Pidgin-English, Chinook, and Benguela, the language used throughout the tribes of the Congo. Yet business of great importance and involving large sums of money is, or has been, transacted in them, and they are used over a wide area.

Pidgin consists of a medley of words, largely English, but with a considerable admixture from other tongues, combined in the framework of Chinese construction. It is current in ports all over the East, and is by no means confined to China. The principle is that roots, chiefly monosyllabic, are used in their crude form without inflection or agglutination, the mere juxtaposition (without any change of form) showing whether they are verbs, adjectives, etc. This is the Chinese contribution to the language.

Chinook is the key-language to dealings with the huge number of different tribes of American Indians. It contains a large admixture of French words, and was to a great extent artificially put together by the Hudson Bay Company's officials, for the purposes of their business.

Quite apart from these various more or less consciously constructed mixed languages, there is a much larger artificial element in many national languages than is commonly realized. Take modern Hungarian, Greek, or even Italian. Literary Italian, as we know it, is largely an artificial construction for literary purposes, made by Dante and others, on the basis of a vigorous and naturally supple dialect. With modern Greek this is even more strikingly the case. As a national language it is almost purely the work of a few scholars, who in modern times arbitrarily and artificially revived and modified the ancient Greek.

There seems, then, to be absolutely no foundation in experience for opposing a universal language on the score of artificiality.

II

OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

List of Schemes proposed

The story of Babel in the Old Testament reflects the popular feeling that confusion of tongues is a hindrance and a curse. Similarly in the New Testament the Pentecostal gift of tongues is a direct gift of G.o.d.

But apparently it was not till about 300 years ago that philosophers began to think seriously about a world-language.

The earliest attempts were based upon the mediaeval idea that man might attain to a perfect knowledge of the universe. The whole sum of things might, it was thought, be brought by division and subdivision within an orderly scheme of cla.s.sification. To any conceivable idea or thing capable of being represented by human speech might therefore be attached a corresponding word, like a label, on a perfectly regular and logical system. Words would thus be self-explanatory to any person who had grasped the system, and would serve as an index or key to the things they represented. Language thus became a branch of philosophy as the men of the time conceived it, or at all events a useful handmaid. Thus arose the idea of a "philosophical language."

A very simple ill.u.s.tration will serve to show what is meant. Go into a big library and look up any work in the catalogue. You will find a reference number-say, 04582.g. 35,c. If you learnt the system of cla.s.sification of that library, the reference number would explain to you where to find that particular book out of any number of millions.

The fact of the number beginning with a "0" would at once place the book in a certain main division, and so on with the other numbers, till "g"

in that series gave you a fairly small subdivision. Within that, "35"

gives you the number of the case, and "c" the shelf within the case. The book is soon run to earth.

Just so a word in a philosophical language. Suppose the word is _brabo_.

The final _o_ shows it to be a noun. The monosyllabic root shows it to be concrete. The initial _b_ shows it to be in the animal category. The subsequent letters give subdivisions of the animal kingdom, till the word is narrowed down by its form to membership of one small cla.s.s of animals. The other members of the cla.s.s will be denoted by an ordered sequence of words in which only the letter denoting the individual is changed. Thus, if _brabo_ means "dog," _braco_ may be "cat," and so on: _brado_, _brafo_, _brago_... etc., according to the cla.s.sification set up.

Words, then, are reduced to mere formulae; and grammar, inflections, etc., are similarly laid out on purely logical, systematic lines, without taking any account of existing languages and their structure.

To languages of this type the historians of the universal language have given the name of _a priori_ languages.

Directly opposed to these is the other group of artificial languages, called _a posteriori_. These are wholly based on the principle of borrowing from existing language: their artificiality consists in choice of words and in regularization and simplification of vocabulary and grammar. They avoid, as far as possible, any elements of arbitrary invention, and confine themselves to adapting and making easier what usage has already sanctioned.

Between the two main types come the _mixed languages_, partaking of the nature of each.

The following list is taken from the _Histoire de la langue universelle_, by MM. Couturat and Leau:

I. A PRIORI LANGUAGES

1. The philosopher Descartes, in a letter of 1629, forecasts a system (realized in our days by Zamenhof) of a regular universal grammar: words to be formed with fixed roots and affixes, and to be in every case immediately decipherable from the dictionary alone. He rejects this scheme as fit "for vulgar minds," and proceeds to sketch the outline of all subsequent "philosophic" languages. Thus the great thinker antic.i.p.ates both types of universal language.

2. Sir Thomas Urquhart, 1653-_Logopandekteision_ (see next chapter).

3. Dalgarno, 1661-_Ars Signorum_. Dalgarno was a Scotchman born at Aberdeen in 1626. His language is founded on the cla.s.sification of ideas. Of these there are seventeen main cla.s.ses, represented by seventeen letters. Each letter is the initial of all the words in its cla.s.s.

4. Wilkins, 1668-_An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language_. Wilkins was Bishop of Chester, and first secretary and one of the founders of the Royal Society. Present members please note. His system is a development of Dalgarno's.

5. Leibnitz, 1646-1716. Leibnitz thought over this matter all his life, and there are various pa.s.sages on it scattered through his works, though no one treatise is devoted to it. He held that the systems of his predecessors were not philosophical enough. He dreamed of a logic of thought applicable to all ideas. All complex ideas are compounds of simple ideas, as non-primary numbers are of primary numbers. Numbers can be compounded _ad infinitum._ So if numbers are translated into p.r.o.nouncible words, these words can be combined so as to represent every possible idea.

6. Delormel, 1795 (An III)-_Projet d'une langue universelle_. Delormel was inspired by the humanitarian ideas of the French Revolution. He wished to bring mankind together in fraternity. His system rests on a logical cla.s.sification of ideas on a decimal basis.

7. Jean Francois Sudre, 1817-_Langue musicale universelle_. Sudre was a schoolmaster, born in 1787. His language is founded on the seven notes of the scale, and he calls it Solresol.

8. Grosselin, 1836-_Systeme de langue universelle_. A language composed of 1500 words, called "roots," with 100 suffixes, or modifying terminations.

9. Vidal, 1844-_Langue universelle et a.n.a.lytique_. A curious combination of letters and numbers.

10. Letellier, 1852-1855-_Cours complet de langue universelle_, and many subsequent publications. Letellier was a former schoolmaster and school inspector. His system is founded on the "theory of language,"

which is that the word ought to represent by its component letters an a.n.a.lysis of the idea it conveys.

11. Abbe Bonifacio Sotos Ochando, 1852, Madrid. The abbe had been a deputy to the Spanish Cortes, Spanish master to Louis Philippe's children, a university professor, and director of a polytechnic college in Madrid, etc. His language is a logical one, intended for international scientific use, and chiefly for writing. He does not think a spoken language for all purposes possible.

12. _Societe Internationale de linguistique_. First report dated 1856.

The object of the society was to carry out a radical reform of French orthography, and to prepare the way for a universal language-"the need of which is beginning to be generally felt." In the report the idea of adopting one of the most widely spoken national languages is considered and rejected. The previous projects are reviewed, and that of Sotos Ochando is recommended as the best. The _a posteriori_ principle is rejected and the _a priori_ deliberately adopted. This is excusable, owing to the fact that most projects. .h.i.therto had been _a priori_. The philosopher Charles Renouvier gave proof of remarkable prescience by condemning the _a priori_ theory in an article in _La Revue_, 1855, in which he forecasts the _a posteriori_ plan.

13. Dyer, 1875-_Lingwalumina; or, the Language of Light_.

14. Reinaux, 1877.

15. Maldent, 1877-_La langue naturelle_. The author was a civil engineer.

16. Nicolas, 1900-_Spokil_. The author is a ship's doctor and former partisan of Volapuk.

17. Hilbe, 1901-_Die Zablensprache_, Based on numbers which are translated by vowels.

18. Dietrich, 1902-_Volkerverkehrssprache_.

19. Mannus Talundberg, 1904-_Perio, eine auf Logik und Gedachtnisskunst aufgebaute Weltsprache_.

II. MIXED LANGUAGES

These are chiefly Volapuk and its derivates.