T HE desire for a universal language, understood from China to
Peru, has long haunted those who look forward to the " federation of the world." A practical expression of this desire, which must continually increase as the means of communication between various countries are perfected, is to be found in the interesting discussion for which a special meeting has been set apart by the Association Francaise pour l'Avancement des Sciences—the analogue of our British Association—on the occasion of its annual Congress, which began on Thursday week at Grenoble. This is an, eminently practical age, which takes less interest in questions of pure speculation than in the way in which they can be brought to bear on daily life, and an illustration is to be found in the form which has been given to this discussion. M. Bourlet and his colleagues are concerned, not with the " universal language " of earlier inquirers, but with the " international auxiliary language " which they hope to see in general use. This means, of course, that they have abandoned the older dream of seeing the disintegrating work of Babel undone. It may be that one day, in the ordinary course of evolution, the world will achieve that task of fusing and unifying its speech which has already been managed by the chief nations within their own boundaries. We are apt to think it natural that all Englishmen or all Frenchmen should be mutually intelligible; but that is really the outcome of centuries of effort. Even at the present day the existence of many dialects within a single country reminds us of the chaos of local idioms from which a national language has been painfully developed. The difficulty which the peasant of Devonshire still finds in under- standing a chance-comer from Northumberland or Galloway —the still greater difficulty, amounting almost to impossi- bility, which the Norman farmer finds in communicating with a Provençal rustic—remind us that the Heptarchy and the old struggle between the tongues of oc and oui still leave their ripples on the stream of time. The great languages of the world, like English and French, are the outcome of many centuries of fusion and strife and survival ; and it is no very absurd dream that some day the spread of education and the free mingling of races may produce one great world-language out of them all. The growth of the lingua franca of the Levant, or of the pigeon—i.e., business—English of the Far East, shows how naturally such a process tends to work itself out on a small scale. Similarly, as Mr. Whiteing reminds us in his latest novel, the effect of School Boards and of cheap excursions has been to produce a kind of blurring of dialect throughout our country,—" a hash of the old local forms intermingled with abundant Cockney to spoil the dish." We cannot prophesy whether one of the great languages will overpower the others, as English has done in the United States, or a general blend will arise, as English or French themselves were produced five or six centuries ago. But it is quite certain that such a world-language will not appear in our time, and that no artificial attempts to produce it will be successful. Racial jealousies and philological con- servatism are too strong for the triumph of English in the one direction, or of Esperanto in the other.
More modest than Urquhart or Dalgarno, Wilkins or Leib- nitz, the modern advocates of a universal language aim only at supplying an auxiliary tongue for general communication between the nations. Every one will go on speaking the mother-tongue ; but what is hoped is that every educated person may also have a secondary speech, in which he can be sure of making himself understood to all educated persons throughout the world,—it is no Utopian ambition to hope that within the present century that may mean to everybody. There is nothing very startling in this aspiration, which has already had a measure of fulfilment in the past. Twice at least Latin has come near to fulfilling the definition of such an " auxiliary international language." At the height of the Roman Empire, when its limits practically coincided with those of the civilised world, the traveller who spoke Latin was sure of making himself understood wherever he might go. Roman settlers, Roman officials, and Roman soldiers carried their language everywhere, much as we have done in India and a great part of Africa, and everywhere it left its mark deeply imprinted on the native speech which persisted, as in Britain, after its disappearance. Once more, after the Revival of Learning, Latin—no longer a living language—became the common tongue of the learned, and remained so until about a century ago. The man of science who had a great work to propound to the world, like Newton, wrote it in Latin, and was confident that it would be understood in every land where there was a mind to which it could appeal. There was much to be said for this practice, which some have hoped to revive ; but the comparative difficulty and lack of flexibility of Latin, coupled with the growing division between classical and scientific or commercial education, make that rather hopeless. An auxiliary language must fulfil three requirements : it must be so easy to learn that any one of moderate intelligence can become proficient in it without excessive labour; it must adapt itself alike to speaking and writing,—to the needs of the tourist and the merchant as well as those of the scientific writer ; and it must be based upon such organic and orderly principles that it can keep touch with the growth of things that have to be expressed in it. Latin, one must admit, is un- suitable on at least two of these grounds.
There seem to be only two alternative plans, then, by which such an auxiliary speech as is desiderated can be obtained. One—at first sight the simpler, but proving on consideration to be hedged about by almost insuperable difficulties—is the choice of some existing language for use in all countries as the second language. French has long been used in this way for the purposes of diplomacy. But for the wider uses now proposed, it is not easy to persuade the world at large to agree on learning any one existing language. German is obviously out of court ; we may say of it what De Quincey said of Latin. French is peculiarly difficult for any Teutonic race to pronounce. English is also very difficult to foreigners, and must remain so until some drastic reform of its spelling is undertaken,—which, on other grounds, we should deplore. Perhaps the best case has been made out for Spanish, which is easy, expressive, and capable of great variety. But racial jealousies more than neutralise the advantage which would arise from adopting a tongue, like English, which is already familiar to a large proportion of the civilised world, and which possesses a literature to reward the student. The alternative is the invention of an artificial language, to be taught in schools all over the world, and to be used solely for international communication. Volapiik was thus invented twenty-five years ago, but it was an unmanageable and hope- less jargon. Other more recent artificial languages are to have their claims urged at Grenoble. Of these by far the most promising is Esperanto. It is quite a new invention, having appeared in 1900, but it has already made consider- able headway. The French Touring Club has taken it up, and advocated its claims with such effect that there are now Esperantists in almost every part of the world, who are able to correspond freely with one another, though they may not know a word of each other's native tongue. It is remarkably easy to learn, owing to its irreducible minimum of grammar and its extreme simplicity of vocabulary. Sir William Ramsay, who is an ardent supporter of Esperanto from the scientific point of view, estimates that any average child could learn it thoroughly in six months. Count Tolstoi has told us that he was able to learn to read it fluently in two hours with the help of a grammar and a dictionary. In France, Russia, and Spain Esperanto is already in use for commercial purposes. As far as we have examined it, we see no reason why this really simple and scientific language should not afford to the tourist and the merchant exactly what they need for communication with foreigners. Of course, for complete usefulness a language of this kind is like the telephone,—every one must have it if it is to display its best features. If Esperanto proves equal to its claims, and is universally adopted as the second language to be taught in the schools of the whole world, a great stumbling- block to free communication between alien races will be removed. It is in view of this possibility that Count Tolstoi has applauded the study and diffusion of such a tongue as "assuredly a Christian labour, which hastens the coming of the Kingdom of God, the main—I should say the only—aim of human life."
Previous page
