io6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



To THE Editor of "Science Progress" 



AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 



From MONTAGU C. BUTLER 



Dear Sir, — I read with interest Mr. Gilbert Richardson's letter on this 

 matter in your current issue, and agree with all he says. His omissions, 

 however, are important. Certainly, as a solution of the problem, Latin 

 cannot compete with a language scientifically constructed for the purpose. 

 But I do not follow Mr. Richardson in his advocacy of a scheme called Ido, 

 for though Ido would be better than Latin, it is in my opinion much inferior 

 to Esperanto, of which it is only a poor imitation. True, in the main Ido is 

 excellent, being pure Esperanto. It is indeed advertised as being Esperanto, 

 but " simplified " and " reformed." An examination of the improvements 

 is interesting. 



Esperanto is phonetic. Ido is not, having various letters for one sound, 

 and various sounds for one letter. It is to the insufficiency of its alphabet 

 that we owe curiosities like jermo, jinjero (germ, ginger). Esperanto obeys 

 a regular and natural system of word-derivation. The system of derivation 

 on which Ido is professedly based (that of " reversibility ") is so arbitrary and 

 contrary to linguistic instinct, that it is not and cannot be carried out in 

 practice. In Esperanto the accent is invariably on the last vowel but one. 

 In Ido it is usually on the last but one, but sometimes on the last, and some- 

 times on the last but two. Esperanto shows the objective case by an accusa- 

 tive termination regularly and invariably used. In Ido the accusative is 

 sometimes obligatory, sometimes optional, and sometimes omitted. Esper- 

 anto is marvellously flexible, with a free word-order, hence it is unrivalled 

 as a medium for translation. In Ido the contrary is the case, and an Ido 

 translation of the ^neid, for example, comparable to that existing in 

 Esperanto, is an impossibility. In Esperanto words internationally related, 

 as when, then : where, there, here, are regularly formed in a similar manner, 

 and easily learned and remembered. In Ido these words are an unrelated 

 chaos. Esperanto forms the plural invariably by the addition of a plural 

 ending to the singular form. The Ido plural is formed in several ways, and 

 bears no relation to the singular. Esperanto has one infinitive. Ido has 

 three, all irregularly stressed and difficult to pronounce. The hiatuses 

 caused by these forms, and the accented monotony of their frequent occur- 

 rence, are distressing in the extreme to a musical ear. Esperanto is inter- 

 national in its elements, Ido is a pidgin-French. Esperanto is " a living 

 language of a living people." It has been put to the severest practical tests 

 and not found wanting, and is in constant use by an ever-increasing number 

 of persons all over the world. It is not possible to give precise figures, but 

 half a million is a conservative estimate of the number of Esperantists. Ido 

 has comparatively a mere handful of partisans, while many of its former 

 supporters have launched other and equally futile schemes of their own or 

 have become Esperantists. Esperanto has grown steadily on a firm basis, 

 so that texts written thirty years ago are as intelligible now as then. Ido has 

 not yet passed the project stage, being subject to continual change, so that 

 the scheme at its inception resembles its present form as little as Chaucer's 

 English resembles that of our own time.^ This helps to explain how it is, 

 that while Esperanto has a very large and growing literature, both of original 

 and of translated works, Ido, in thirteen years, has produced only a few 



^ We are promised, however, that further changes will not be made till 

 1924. 



