548 Professor F. G. Don nan [March 24, 



these questions. The true solution of the problem may consist in 

 selecting the most international roots according to the fashion of 

 Peano, but also the most international affixes of derivation. With 

 these natural elements derivatives and compounds will then be 

 formed according to simple and invariable rules. Tims the advan- 

 tages of the Neo-Latin or Anglo-Latin vocabulary of stems will be 

 combined with the regular and autonomous word-derivation of Ido. 

 This is the view held by Professor Guerard, who has just published a 

 most valuable book, entitled " A Short History of the International 

 Language Movement" (Fisher Unwin, 1922). 



As Professor Guerard points out, these two sets of fundamental 

 ideas are embodied in the language project of M. Albert Michaux, 

 entitled 



Roman al. 



Here, for example, is the Lord's Prayer in Romanal : — 



" Patro nostri, que es in cieles, sanctificat estas nomine tui ; advenias 

 regne tui ; fias volite tui, sicut en ciele, et in terre. II pane nostri 

 quotidiani das ad nos hodie ; et dimittas nostri debites, sicut et nos 

 dimitta debitantos nostri ; et ne nos inducas en tentatione, sed liberas 

 nos ex male. Amen." 



Needless to say, Romanal is not the last word on the subject, nor 

 is it free from debatable points. But it represents the combination 

 of an " etymological Anglo-Latin root " vocabulary with regularity 

 of word-derivation and simplicity of grammar. 



In the preceding discussion I have endeavoured to give you a 

 very brief account of some of the principal efforts to solve the 

 problem. There have been very many others, and you will find a 

 learned account of these in the works of Professors Couturat and 

 Leau, referred to previously. The large amount of research work 

 already done and the practical success of Esperanto and Ido prove 

 that the problem is not an insoluble one. At first one might be 

 inclined to think that the production of an international auxiliary 

 language is a sort of parlour game, or at best a pure matter of 

 caprice. Attentive study of the problem shows that this is quite a 

 false view. "Whatever may be the final solution, it is already clear 

 that some of the fundamental principles have been elucidated. There 

 does exist a science of synthetic linguistics compounded of logic, 

 psychology and philology. It has been argued that the field hitherto 

 traversed, at all events in the later systems, is too narrow ; that the 

 so-called international vocabularies are not really international, and 

 apply at best only to two groups of existing languages. What 

 comfort, it is argued, can a word such as " amico " bring to the 

 Basques, Finns, Hungarians, Turks, Japanese, Chinese, etc. ? What 

 special comfort, I would then ask, does the learning of English, 



