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 ficial languages and rejected them all, including Esperanto in its original form. It adopted, however, Esperanto in principle under reserve of certain modifications to be introduced by the Permanent Commission of the Delegation in the sense defined by the report of the secretaries of the Committee and by the project of Ido which had also been presented for examination. Besides, the Committee recommended an understanding with the Linguistic Committee for Esperanto. When subsequently this understanding was sought, the majority of the Esperanto Committee, or at least that number of its members which was given out as its majority, refused absolutely to recognize the necessity of reforming Esperanto, and all negotiations in this respect had to be broken off. The Permanent Commission of the Delegation thereupon went its own way beginning a systematic further development and perfection of the project of Ido. The Esperanto Committee also went its own way. But its failure to agree with the Permanent Commission of the Delegation caused Esperanto to lose ground everywhere. The deterioration of the language which had already commenced before continued now unchecked and is still continuing so that the language has become so overcharged with absurdities as to be entirely unfit for the rôle of an international language.

It is evident that the history of Volapük is repeating itself in Esperanto, though at a slower pace owing to the relative superiority of the latter over the former. The primary cause for the retrogression of Esperanto lies in substantial philological defects which have called forth sharp criticism from the most competent sources. The foremost of these linguistic defects is a faulty system of derivation or rather lack of a proper system of derivation. For while other imperfections, as peculiar letters not contained in any other language, cacophony, too much inflection, cannot render the language more imperfect than it was in its original form, faulty derivation increases the faults in leading to absurd word formations which by-and-by become an integral part of the language. This defect of Esperanto has 3