544 Professor F. G. Donnan [March 24, 



have been worked out. Before the war there appeared ten or twelve 

 periodicals dealing with or written in this language. The Inter- 

 national Ido Academy has done very fine work in bringing it to as 

 high a state of perfection as possible. Very many Ido Clubs and 

 Societies have been formed in all parts of the world, and already a 

 very considerable literature exists. We may say that the Ido, like 

 the Esperanto, movement has clone immense service in familiarising* 

 the world with the practicability of an international auxiliary lan- 

 guage. Both these great linguistic experiments are of profound 

 interest and importance. 



I must now lead your thoughts away from Esperanto and Ido, 

 and back to the International Academy for a Universal Language, 

 which was founded by the two International Yolapiik Congresses of 

 1887 and 1889. This Academy continued to exist, and set itself to the 

 task of reforming Yolapiik. Very important and scholarly work was 

 done by Mr. Rosenberger, a Russian engineer, and his collaborators 

 (Rosenberger was a Director of tbe Academy from 1893 to 1898). 

 They produced a vocabulary of root-words based on the principle of 

 maximum internationally. The greater part of these roots are 

 common to at least four of the seven chief languages — German, 

 English, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Latin. Largely as a 

 consequence of the inclusion of Latin, the result was an almost 

 exclusively Neo-Latin vocabulary — one much more Romanic than 

 that of Esperanto. 



A very simple grammar and a regular system of word-derivation 

 by means of derivative affixes were introduced. But autonomous 

 word-formation was not allowed to exclude international derivatives. 

 There was no constant ending to distinguish, as in Esperanto, a 

 noun, an adjective, or the present indicative of a verb. Natural 

 gender was indicated by final -o and -a ; when necessary, the plural 

 by -/. The adjective remained invariable, unless it was used as a 

 substantive. There was no article, definite or indefinite. The con- 

 jugation of the verb was as follows : — 



Verb Conjugation. 

 Amar = to love 



Mi am = I love 

 Mi arnav = I loved 

 Mi av amed = I have loved 

 Mi avav amed = I had loved 

 Mi amero = I shall love 

 Mi avero amed = I shall have loved 

 Mi amerio = I would love 



Particles : amant, amed. 



Passive by means of the verb esar (to be) and the past participle- 

 amed. 



