Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/290

286 represented by th in with, and the surd represented by the same digraph in pith. The accentuation is irregular and perplexing, while the orthography is hopeless. A half-dozen sounds may be represented by one letter or combination of letters, or one sound may be represented by as many varying signs.

There are irregular verbs, about 175 in number, numerous irregular and defective plurals, and a want of clearness due to the fact that nouns, particles, adjectives, adverbs and verbs may have the same form, and that different tenses of the verb may be identical in form, whether or not identical in sound. There is also a more or less stereotyped and yet elusive word-order.

Any and all of the national languages are then out of the question, first because none can yet secure adoption even if it were suitable, and second, because none is suitable. To be capable of truly international use a language must be possible of complete acquirement by all, whether linguistically gifted or not, and must be possible of such acquirement in such short space of time as can be devoted to this by the majority of the busy citizens of the world. Its acquirement must be an incidental preparation for one's profession or business, not an end in itself, or a matter of higher culture for the few.

Hence the thought of modifying some one of these languages, or combining them, or in some way forming a neutral language, objectionable to none on political or sentimental grounds, easily mastered by all, and therefore recognized by all nations and races as the accepted medium for international communication. That it must appeal to all sufficiently to be thus accepted is an important item, for, as has been previously intimated, nothing of this kind can be forced into use. It must be such a language that every intelligent citizen of each nation can and will learn it, as the first language to be mastered after his mother-tongue, to be able to read it, speak it and write it, in his capacity as a citizen of the world, and as an intelligent citizen of his own nation.

Since the days of Descartes this dream has haunted one and another, and plans for such a tongue have been proposed, necessarily crude at first, gaining in value as time went on, and as each author of such a plan profited by the faults in the projects of his predecessors. The earliest attempts were to create a language of philosophical or a priori nature, in which words are reduced to mere formulæ, a certain letter of the alphabet indicating the concrete, another vegetable life, another animal life and so on. The idea, although wholly impracticable, has not yet entirely disappeared, and a priori schemes are still occasionally promulgated. One project, for example, has the following