Page:Dr. Esperanto's International Language. Introduction and complete grammar. Por angloj. Warsaw, 1889.pdf/13

— 13 — accordance with a rule of the grammar, which require their insertion between each component part of every complete word). Thus the learner experiences no difficulty, and never even imagines that what he calls terminations, suffixes, etc.,—are complete and independent words, which always keep their own proper significations, whether placed at the beginning or end of a word, in the middle, or alone. The result of this construction of the language is, that everything written in it can be immediately and perfectly understood by the help of the vocabulary,—or even almost without it,—by anyone who has not only not learnt the language before, but even has never heard of its very existence. Let me illustrate this by an example:—I am amongst Englishmen, and have not the slightest knowledge of the English language; I am absolutely in need of making myself understood, and write in the international tongue, may be, as follows:

Mi ne sci'as kie mi las'is la baston'o'n; ĉu vi ĝi'n ne vid'is?

I hold out to one of the strangers an international-english vocabulary, and point to the title, where the following sentence appears in large letters: „Everything written in the intetnationalinternational [sic] language can be translated by the help of this vocabulary. If several words together express but a single idea, they are written as one word, but separated by commas; e.g., frat'in'o, though a single idea is yet composed of three words which must be looked for separately in the vocabulary“. If my companion has never heard of the international language he will