Chapter 2

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 Esperanto, are based on Latin. Consequently also, the international language must be largely English, because mostly those Latin words will be chosen that are common at least to French and English. I have lectured to hundreds of English audiences, and I have given them numerous examples of Esperanto words in my lectures that could be easily understood by everybody. Take the words "skribi," to write; "lerni," to learn; "mangxi," to eat; "trinki," to drink; "tablo," a table; "glaso," a glass; "nazo," the nose, and "busxo," the mouth; "mano," the hand; take the adjectives, bona, bela, granda, kapabla, etc. Few, indeed, are the Esperanto words that do not connect at all with the English; in most cases, in at least 87 cases out of 100, you will find those words connect with one or many English words.

Mr. TOWNER. You mean that 87 per cent of the words now in the Esperanto vocabulary are formative words?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes: they are connected with the English language, and from each Esperanto word you can form mechanically absolutely every word that sense and logic can possibly connect with the one and only meaning of the original Esperanto word. I am accustomed to lecturing before audiences and making this statement, which I make without fear of contradiction, that "if all of you were to take up Esperanto now and carry it on until you were as expert in it as I am, you would not in the whole of your studies come across more than 60 words, probably not more than 50 words, which are entirely new to you."

Mr. TOWNER. Of course, a vocabulary of 3,000 words is a very limited vocabulary; it is a primitive vocabulary?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes?

Mr. TOWNER. How are you going to increase it? For instance, how are you going to make it a literary language? How are you going to write poems?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Personally I should not want an international language for poetry, although Esperanto does in fact lend itself excellently to the purposes of the muses. But to answer your question: First of all, the Esperanto language does not contain any words at all; I think there are only 138 full-fledged words, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, but the rest of the vocabulary is formed of roots only. Let us take the words "to sew," "to stitch." The root is "kudr." It is only a root, and that alone stands in the vocabulary. Now, if you want to make this root into a noun "o" is added to it, "kudro": if you want to make it an adjective, you add "a" to it, "kudra"; if you want to make it an adverb you add "e," kudre, which would mean by or through sewing, "sewingly," if it could be so expressed in English; and if you want to make it a verb it would be "kudri," because every infinitive ends in "i." You see, with that root to begin with you can form four words, and you can express a great deal more in Esperanto than anybody can possibly imagine; in fact Esperanto is, on account of its perfect and absolutely complete flexibility, more precise and more comprehensive than any language under the sun. As I said before, you can form four words from every root at the start if sense allows it, and sense allows you a great deal more leeway in Esperanto than anybody can possibly know about, because in no language are you allowed to proceed by sense. The English language does not allow it, nor does any other, not oven German or Greek, but it is allowed in this most logical of all languages, Esperanto. (7)

Mr. TOWNER. Take the illustration you have just used. We say "The sewing is beautiful." and "We find her sewing assiduously." Now, we use the same word, but the formation of the sentence determines whether or not it is a noun or a verb.

Prof. CHRISTEN. You mean the distinction between the participle and the noun?

Mr. TOWNER. Yes.

Prof. CHRISTEN. With your permission I will not answer that particularly, but will deal with the whole subject. I want to say that from every root you form four words, the four principal parts of speech. And the first thing to remember is this positive stroke of genius--that every noun ends with "o," every adjective with "a," every derived adverb with "e," and every infinitive with "i."

Mr. TOWNER. How would you carry that to proper names?

Prof. CHRISTEN. London would be Londono; Robert is Roberto, but proper names you are at liberty to do with as you please; give them the Esperanto ending or leave them in the original form.

Mr. TOWNER. What about Washington?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Washingtono.

Mr. TOWNER. I mean, you would really change it?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; if you prefer it; that is, if it sounds better.

Mr. TOWNER. In the language?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes.

Mr. TOWNER. For instance, if you were speaking about the city of Washington, you would not say Washington, but Washingtono?

Prof. CHRISTEN. You will find it frequently printed as Washingtono.

Mr. TOWNER. Why do you do that, because Washingtono is not the name of the city?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Let me say that you say London in English, but that is not French.

Mr. TOWNER. But we always spell Paris the French way, although we do not pronounce it the same way; that is, "Paree."

Prof. CHRISTEN. But London is not London in French; it is "Londres" in French.

Mr. TOWNER. Do you mean to say that if a letter were addressed to London from Paris the Frenchman would not pronounce and write it London but Londres?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes.

Mr. TOWNER. He does not say London?

Prof. CHRISTEN. No, he says Londres. And the same is true with Dover; Dover is not French; The French would be Douvres. However, I want to say this, that after the first three or four years after I took up Esperanto geographical or proper names were left optional and they were not given any particular spelling in the Esperanto language and are not now. Many Esperantists now would say Washington and London. But you can make the change if you want to.

Mr. TOWNER. Internationally, has not that come to be the custom, to pronounce the geographical names and proper names in the way they are pronounced in the country in which they originate?

Prof. CHRISTEN. I think so. As I said, there is no arbitrary rule about personal names or geographical names. Now, let me proceed with this marvelous scheme and repeat that every part of speech is distinctive in itself; that is the reason a child, when it follows Esperanto, will not find English so hard and will understand English better than in any other way. Such a child will understand English far better than if it did not understand Esperanto, and that is a statement I often make in my lectures.

Mr. RIPLEY. We had a man here the other day who has a language which he claims is an improvement on Esperanto.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes?

Mr. RIPLEY. He is from Ohio, I believe.

Prof. CHRISTEN. I know. Since Esparanto began to move forward there have been at least 30 to 40 different schemes elaborated, and that is easily done. You can do it overnight. But there is no scheme that has ever touched and no scheme that can ever touch Esperanto, because it has hit the mark from the first. (8)

Mr. TOWNER. What do you do with adverbs? Do they have a definite form?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Every derived adverb ends in "e."

Mr. TOWNER. So you could not distinguish from the form between a verb and an adverb, could you?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Perfectly. The adverb ends in "e" and the infinitive ends in "i."

Mr. RIPLEY. It is your contention that children will do better in English if they acquire a knowledge of Esperanto?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Undoubtedly; this is a statement I make in my lectures: If you gentlemen will give me a number of children aged 4 or 5 years I will give them a quarter of an hour's pleasant explanation about grammar, that is Esperanto grammar, and they will understand it after a quarter of an hour's explanation; then I will jumble together a number of blocks, with various words on these blocks, and I will say to these children "pick out every noun," and they will be able to do it--that is, pick the nouns from the adjectives--and so with every part of speech.

The CHAIRMAN. Because they will know to a certainty?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; every word tells its own tale on account of its distinctive ending. Now, that is a thing you can not do in English; that nobody can do in English, because we can not tell the parts of speech simply by the appearance of the words; we can only know from the context and that is not always easy!

The CHAIRMAN. How does that apply to other languages?

Prof. CHRISTEN. The same thing applies more or less to all, because they are all irregular; they were not formed; they have "growd" like Topsy.

Mr. TOWNER. The Latin language is more regular?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes: but it does not begin to compare with Esperanto. Now, we have had these four words, and I want to proceed a little further, and I will take up something that will help me to answer your questions. If I had to teach you gentlemen French I would have to make you commit to memory 2,667 endings and contractions for the verb alone; it would take you months and months to learn that alone. The same absurdities and even worse occur in Italian, in Spanish, in German, in English, and in all so-called natural languages.

Mr. TOWNER. And we never could learn these irregularities and exceptions.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Well, if you did learn them you would never remember them at the right time because the whole scheme is so complicated. This is only one of the many reasons which make us so shy at speaking foreign languages. Now, the same thing is true of German, and of all other languages, but it is not true of Esperanto. I will teach you the whole Esperanto conjugation in five minutes and you will never forget it, because there is nothing to remember. You already know that a noun ends in "o" and that the infinitive ends in "i," and so on: there is absolutely no difficulty whatever. (9) Now, I am sorry I have to speak so rapidly, because I would like to give you more information.

The CHAIRMAN. We would be glad to have you add to your remarks.

Mr. TOWNER. You can extend your remarks.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Since my time is up and, indeed, far exceeded, I will be very glad to do so. But before I leave you, let me read one or two items, which will only take two minutes more. Here is a quotation from the British Esperantist, of November, 1913, showing the progress Esperanto is making:

The central Esperanto bureau, of Paris, gives the following statistics: In 1889, there had been published 29 books in Esperanto; in 1899, 128; in 1910, 1,554; in 1912 (to August 30), 1,837. Enough already to keep most readers going for full five years of Sundays, and the output, both of bookshop and of press, is increasing daily.

Mr. TOWNER. In a general way, what is the character of this literature?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Up to now chiefly textbooks for learning Esperanto, such as this little book [indicating], which can be purchased for 10 cents. You can learn the whole mechanism of the language from one of these little books. Then there are a great many other publications, translations, scientific articles, etc., and we have already several novels originally written in the new language.

Mrs. CRAFTS. May I say a word right here? I hold in my hand the New Testament, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society together with the Scotch Bible Society. It is a translation from Nestle's Greek Testament, and the Old Testament is now being translated by one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars in the world.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Here is the next item, which I would like to read to you:

Evening classes for the study of Esperanto under the auspices of the L.C.C. (London county council) are being held at the Halstow Road Nonvocational Institute, Greenwich, S.E., on Thursday, 7.30-9.30 p.m., and at Bloomfield Road Commercial Institute, Plumstead, S.E., on Fridays, 7.20-10.50 p. m. Instructor Mr. William H. Dennis, B.D.E.A., 108, Eglinton Road, Plumstead, S.E., from whom any information may be obtained. These classes are designed especially to meet the requirements of the serious student, beginner or advanced. (10)

That is from London. Then I have another quotation which I want to read from Edinburgh:

The chief constable of Edinburgh has interested himself in Esperanto, especially in view of the 1915 congress. The chief constable has ordered a copy of "Esperanto For All," to be sent to the 650 members of the Edinburgh police force, with a recommendation that the police learn the language. A class for policemen is being arranged, for which 14 names have been received.

Esperanto classes for policemen have been conducted for several years in several towns in Germany, in France, in Spain, etc., and even during their hours of duty classes are going on in Esperanto so that policemen may learn Esperanto without the loss of their own personal time. I thank you, gentlemen, for bearing with me so long.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. I should like to have an opportunity, if possible, at some future time to have you give us about 10 or 15 minutes to hear Mrs. Crafts.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall be very glad indeed to give you that time.

(The additional matter submitted by Prof. Christen follows:)

(1) We are apt to lose sight of the fact that the whole world's business is daily becoming more and more internationalized and that what in former centuries was done parochially is now more and more done internationally.

The first public international convention ever held took place less than 75 years ago; it is a significant fact that this was a peace convention. To-day there are over 300 societies: Commercial, scientific, religious, sociological, industrial, sporting, etc., organized internationally. During those seventy-odd years over 2,000 international congresses of one kind or another have actually taken place, and now a days not one year passes without several scores being added to the total. An incomplete list for 1914 gives 49 such prospective international gatherings and over one score of exhibitions, fairs, and festivals of an international character.

What lamentable and foolish and provoking situation at such gatherings is due to the multitude of tongues only those know who have wasted time and money in attending them. Usually three or more languages are officially accepted and most of the time is irretrievably lost in misunderstandings and more or less inadequate translations.

Compare with this the nine yearly international Esperanto congresses held at Boulogne, Geneva, Cambridge, Dresden, Barcelona, Washington, Cracow, Antwerp, and Berne, at which from 800 to 1,500 delegates from 20 to 30 different countries spent a week in complete communion through this wonderful language. Orations, discussions, sermons, concerts, theatrical performances, and general fellowship among the members being freely enjoyed by all, and often by individuals who had only had a few weeks of acquaintance with the language.

An international language of some sort has become an absolute necessity of our new era of universal solidarity.

A hopeful sign of progress is that many international organizations have already declared in favor of Esperanto for their future meetings.

(2) The impossibility of ever making any national language international will at once become clear if we imagine the whole youth of the United States condemned to become proficient in French or Spanish or German. Say we take the easiest of them, Spanish: does anyone dream the thing possible? Only an infinitesimal fraction of our young people could attain even a smattering, and that at the cost of from two to three years' study; and even then it is quite unlikely that other nations would adopt the same language. But if they all did this impossible thing the Spanish speaking peoples would still have the pull on them all because they grow up with the language and have not to acquire it artificially.

What holds good for Spanish holds good for even other so called natural language, including English, and more with English than any other on account of its barbarous spelling and pronunciation.

None of these objections, neither structural nor national, apply to Esperanto, which is entirely neutral and ideally simple.

(3) The U.E.A. (Universala Esperanto Asocio) has its central office at 10 Rue de la Bourse, Geneva, Switzerland. Yearly dues 50 cents for private members, $2.50 for business firms. These contributions entitle the members to use the machinery of the association for the acquisition of information--free of cost, except postage--on any subject whatever (except confidential matters), the only condition being that the request be written in Esperanto. A sufficient amount of Esperanto for this purpose can be acquired by anyone in a few days, or even in a few hours. It is not even necessary to have a teacher, the textbooks being very easy to master. In America, if local booksellers do not yet stock Esperanto literature, the would-be student may apply to Peter Reilly, Esperanto bookseller, 133 North Thirteenth Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

A growing number of Esperantists all over the world are using the services of the U.E.A., not only in correspondence, but actually traveling through many countries for pleasure or profit by means of Esperanto alone, and finding everywhere helpful hints and congenial surroundings in the local Esperanto groups.