|
Enkomputiligis Don HARLOW |
The International Auxiliary Language Association in the United States Inc. (IALA), which is usually identified in the eyes of the public with the person of its Honorary Secretary, Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris, has just published a "General Report 1945," summarizing its activities in the past (since its foundation in 1924) and outlining its plans for the future. IALA has undoubtedly aided in the promotion of the idea of an international auxiliary language among important circles which had hardly been reached before, in particular in the United States. It has been able to raise for its research and promotional activities considerable funds, and to spend well over half a million dollars within twenty years. It has published the "General Language Course", by Helen S. Eaton, using Esperanto as a basis for the subsequent study of Latin, French, Spanish, and German. It commissioned the late Professor H. N. Shenton, of Syracuse University, to make an extensive study on the language problems of international conferences (published under the title "Cosmopolitan Conversation" in 1933). It has helped to pierce the soap bubble of Basic English. On behalf of IALA, Professor Edward L. Thorndike, of Columbia University, undertook experimentation to "ascertain the relative ease of learning constructed languages and natural languages." Esperanto and Ido (a "reformed" dialect of Esperanto, which has died since) were the constructed languages used, while French, German, Italian and Spanish were used for comparison. Professor Thorndike found that "on the whole, with expenditures of from ten to a hundred hours, the achievement in the synthetic language will probably be from five to fifteen times that in a natural language, according to the difficulty of the latter" (p. 50).
When IALA was founded "to promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and on stable foundations" (p. 15), the problem seemed to consist primarily in an investigation of the respective claims of Esperanto and Ido. In view of the fact that Ido was more difficult to learn than Esperanto and that the Ido movement, even in its heyday, never reached even 5 percent of the strength of the Esperanto movement, the Esperantists were certain that IALA would soon decide in favor of Esperanto and become a valuable ally in the work for Esperanto. Such an ally would have been particularly welcome in the United States where people were less "language-conscious" than elsewhere and where the Esperanto movement has unfortunately remained far behind the strength which it achieved in European countries, in the Far East, and in Brazil. IALA has, however, not fulfilled these expectations. Instead of rallying to the support of the only living Interlanguage (after the disappearance of Ido), the few persons controlling IALA decided to concoct a new,project, defying all experiences of the past and adding another lifeless blueprint to the long list of those whose failure is a matter of record in the history of Interlinguistics.
The "General Report" contains samples of what the future IALA language is expected to be like and, explains the principles according to which it is being constructed. As a matter of fact, the IALA staff has not been working on one language but on three at a time, referred to as the "Naturalistic Model," the "Schematic E Model," and the "Schematic K Model." The "Naturalistic" language looks like Peano's "Latino sine Flexione" with a dash (a very light dash, though) of de Wahl's "Occidental." The "Schematic E" language is the same product exposed to the influence of Jespersen's "Novial." Some Esperanto influence has been added in the manufacture of the "Schematic K" model IALA research and money do not seem to have produced anything new or original. How an amalgamation of several unsuccessful projects, with a tiny bit of Esperanto flavor added, is to produce a successful Interlanguage is difficult to grasp.
The IALA languages suffer of an incurable congenital disease. They are much too difficult to learn. For a Russian or a Chinese, the "Naturalistic" form is almost as difficult as English or Spanish. For an English-speaking person (or a Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, Italian), the written language is immediately understandable if he knows Latin and/or several of the Romance languages. Understanding the spoken language would be difficult, however, and learning to speak the language would be many times more difficult than learning to speak Esperanto. The "Schematic B" and "Schematic K" languages would be somewhat easier to learn because their word derivation is less irregular and the "K" model has phonetic spelling (which has been neglected in the other models for the sake of "natural" appearance). Both "E" and "K" are, however, definitely inferior to Esperanto. One might say of the IALA languages what Lancelot Hogben and Frederick Bodmer say of Latino sine Flexione ("The Loom of Language, p. 476): "Its author ignored the interests of the peoples of Africa and Asia, as he also ignored the plain man in Europe."
IALA claims to arrive at its language by the "impersonal methods of science" (General Report, p. 18). It cannot be denied, however, that "the basic procedures of IALA's system of standardization" are arbitrarily chosen. IALA says that they have been established by a Committee on Agreement and that the six members of this Committee are persons of great reputation. It would be easy, however, to find a much larger number of persons of equally great reputation who consider those "basic procedures" as erroneous and inadequate. There is no proof to indicate that the members of the Committee on Agreement speak for anyone but themselves. Who selected them? Mrs. Morris! It would seem that in the last analysis IALA's methods are not half as "impersonal" as is claimed.
IALA uses "control languages" (English, Ftench, Italian, Spanish-Portuguese, these two counting as one unit). Words appearing in at least three control languages are considered as "international." The "prototype" of each word is obtained by a study of its etymology. The result is - naturally - almost identical with Professor Peano's "Latino sine Flexione" project. The short "samples" given in the "General Report" show, however, that IALA does not hesitate to break its own "impersonal" rules whenever that is found more convenient. Take, for instance, English "but," French "mais," Italian "ma," Spanish "mas," Portuguese "mas." Etymologically, the word which is found in all of IALA's "control languageÙs" except English, comes from the Latin "magis." But - disregarding its own rules - IALA chooses for its "Naturalistic language "sed," which does not exist in a single "control language." I do not object to "sed" (Esperanto uses it) but wish to draw attention to the fact that in this case, as in others, IALA uses arbitrary decision, not "impersonal" rules. It is even more surprising that the "Naturalistic" "sed" becomes "ma" in "Schematic E" and switches back to "sed" in "Schematic K.' How this is compatible with the statement that "our schematic vocabulary is developed by applying certain additional procedures to the basic procedures which have produced the fundamental naturalistic vocabulary" (p. 35) is beyond my understanding.
One of the few words in IALA's sample text (pp. 44-45) which are different from what they would be in Latino sine Flexione is "guerra" for "war" (Peano has "bello"). The written word might be acceptable: The spoken word is not. "Guerra" is a romanized Germanic word (in Old French the "gu" stands for Old German and Anglo-Saxon "w"). IALA pronounces the "u"; "gooairah" while of all the national languages only Italian does so. Matters are worse in the case of IALA's "guarantire" (also a romanized Germanic word) . French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian - and, of course, Esperanto - have the stem "garanti" or "garant." English has "u" in the spelling but disregard~ it in the pronunciation. IALA, unlike any living language; writes and pronounces "gu." These examples, based on a 300-word sample text, could easily be extended.
It is not the custom in the Esperanto movement to pay much attention to new language projects, which are produced at the rate of half a dozen a year and are usually forgotten before the printer's bill for the first textbook is paid. The three IALA projects, as language projects, would not deserve any space in the American Esperantist either. They are mentioned here because in this case there is a danger of great damage being done to the Interlanguage idea by these projects; or their final product, being marketed under the cover of recommendations which were given for the earlier research activities of IALA by organizations, linguists, and interlinguists who, in fact, do not approve at all of the dilettantism underlying the production of IALA’s own dialect.
Page 64 of the General Report lists members of the Second International Congress of Linguists, Geneva, 1931, and of the Third International Congress of Linguists, Rome; 1933, who signed a testimonial expressing their "general sympathy with IALA's Program of Linguistic Research." Among, them are, for instance, Dr. Björn Collinder, Professor of Finno-Ugrian Languages at the University of Upsala, Sweden, and Dr. Bruno Migliorini, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Rome, Italy. Professor Collinder, in October 1944, in a Swedish teacher's journal published an article in which he says: "There are linguists who approve of Esperanto in principle but believe that it suffers from defects in its details and should be reconstructed. I have carefully followed this linguistic criticism and, I am sorry to say, the prejudice underlying it is entirely sterile and destructive. ... After a thorough examination of Ido, Occidental, Novial and Latino sine Flexione, the best known among the competitors of Esperanto, I must say that it is my considered opinion that all of them are considerably inferior to Esperanto. ... If one asks me how the world language problem should be solved, my answer is: It is solved already in Esperanto. The problem is only to get the solution accepted by those in power." (See also Professor Collinder's article in this issue.)
Professor Migliorini's opinion, similar to that of Professor Collinder, appears in his article on "Universal Languages" in the "Enciclopedia Italiana" (Vol 19, pp. 396-398): "Occidental looks less artificial than Esperanto but the difficulties of learning it are only little inferior to those of learning a natural tongue. ... It is obvious that a project coming fresh from the mind of some scholar may have a number of valuable features: But it is nor possible to simply put such a language on the same level with a language like Esperanto which has been practically used in many fields for two generations and which, though it has not succeeded in becoming generally accepted, has proved in practical life that it satisfies the most various requirements."
There can be little doubt that if someone would undertake to poll all the linguists whose names one finds in IALA's "General Report," a majority of them - probably an overwhelming majority - would have to be "counted out" when it comes to supporting IALA's own projects.
It may be assumed that IALA will do a better job than Latino sine Flexione, Occidental and Novial in promotional activities, fund-raising, publications, lobbying at Government Departments and private organizations, etc. One need, however, not be much of a prophet to predict that its language will fail to penetrate into practical use. Indirectly IALA's endeavors may in part have aided Esperanto and the Interlanguage idea. It must be feared, however, that any positive results from earlier endeavors will be outweighed by the confusion which IALA's efforts are bound to create in the minds of people who are not well acquainted with the facts and the problem. It should be clearly understood by all Interlinguists that whatever IALA's merits may have been in the past, it has ceased to be an impartial, objective research organization and has deliberately chosen to add its name to the list of hundreds of other lifeless language projects which have unsuccessfully tried to displace Esperanto, to which each one of them is greatly inferior.
In 1924, when international projects were rampant as a result of the Esperanto-Ido schism, IALA was organized to bring agreement between the competing systems. In its "Outline of Program", 1924, adopted by IALA's Advisory Committee and Board of Directors, it declared (p. 13):
"The Association (IALA) has no intention of developing or promoting any new language. In regard to different systems, its function is merely to serve as a neutral clearing house for study and information."
In 1945, when natural evolution and the dictates of history have thoroughly discredited Ido, discouraged most project-puzzlers, and brought Esperanto to the fore throughout the world as the sole living Interlanguage, IALA turns to developing and promoting new projects, viz.:
NATURALISTIC, SCHENMTIC E, and SCHEMATIC K. These were preceded by IALA (Tentative Form), in 1944.